{"id":87101,"date":"2026-01-02T04:18:21","date_gmt":"2026-01-02T04:18:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/87101\/"},"modified":"2026-01-02T04:18:21","modified_gmt":"2026-01-02T04:18:21","slug":"the-inauguration-style-of-new-york-citys-new-first-lady","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/87101\/","title":{"rendered":"The Inauguration Style of New York City\u2019s New First Lady"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Estimated3 min read<\/p>\n

At the stroke of midnight on the first day of the new year, Zohran Mamdani officially became the first Muslim and South Asian mayor of New York City. Joined by a small group of close family and campaign members in the City Hall subway station, Mamdani, a Democratic Socialist who is also one of the youngest mayors ever elected in New York City, was sworn into office by State Attorney General Letitia James. He was joined by his wife, Rama Duwaji, an artist and illustrator whose chic style has quickly become a point of focus of Mamdani\u2019s run and his win\u2013a signifier of an \u201cout with the old, in with the new\u201d mentality.<\/p>\n

Mamdani, wearing in a suit and printed tie from New Delhi-based brand Kartik Research<\/a>, helmed by Kartik Kumra, used his grandfather\u2019s Quran for the ceremony. It was held proudly by Duwaji, who was styled by Gabriella Karefa-Johnson, which Johnson revealed this evening in her own Substack post<\/a>. Karefa-Johnson confirmed that Duwaji wore a black vintage Balenciaga coat, culotte-style shorts from The Frankie Shop, and a pair of boots from the cool shoe label Miista, which were borrowed. (Similar styles have been worn by Charli XCX and Kendall Jenner.) Her earrings were chandelier style and made of chunky gold, on loan from New York Vintage. <\/p>\n

\"new<\/p>\n

Pool<\/p>\n

\"new<\/p>\n

Pool<\/p>\n

To greet the public after the ceremony, Duwaji changed into a chocolate-brown, A-line coat with a funnel neck from Palestinian-Lebanese designer Cynthia Merhej, who helms her own label called Renaissance Renaissance<\/a>. She swapped her gold earrings for a pair that were silver, sculpted into the shape of a thick tusk. Both of the First Lady\u2019s looks were ones you might see someone wearing to dinner with creative friends at a downtown Manhattan hotspot, or to an independent gallery opening in Tribeca. Maybe she\u2019s meeting a date at a natural wine bar in Brooklyn. To analyze Duwaji\u2019s fashion is to say something about how a large chunk of young (she is Gen Z), urban-dwelling New Yorkers like to dress. They favor a mostly-black palette, crop their tops, buy a lot of vintage, and wear sharp little boots made for kicking through the political muddiness of our time. Duwaji is dressing like herself, as she has throughout the campaign and the election, but she also is keenly aware of political fashion cues, and she knows that no matter how staid they may be, they still matter, especially in the age of social media. But perhaps there is an opportunity to do it her way.<\/p>\n

\"new<\/p>\n

ANGELA WEISS<\/p>\n

When Mamdani won the election, Duwaji, as a sign of support, chose to wear a laser-cut denim top by the independent Palestinian designer Zeid Hijazi<\/a>. She has since posed for an editorial in New York Magazine’s The Cut wearing several independent and local New York City brands including Diotima (a brand whose fashion show she attended back in September). She is making radically different fashion choices than the first ladies who have come before her, which feels fitting for the incoming administration that has promised to bring revolutionary change to New York City. Gone are the boring dresses and pantsuits of yore. Her fashion, and her approach to dressing, is entirely owned by her. That\u2019s what makes it inspiring, and at the start of this country\u2019s 250th year, at a time when political hope has been hard to come by, a little inspiration can go a long, long way.
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"3 min read At the stroke of midnight on the first day of the new year, Zohran Mamdani…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":87102,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[567,42040,1381,568,9,11,10,42039],"class_list":{"0":"post-87101","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-content-type-news","9":"tag-contentid-56e8c998-6a11-4d8f-be83-56c4e338f66f","10":"tag-displaytype-long-form-article","11":"tag-locale-us","12":"tag-new-york","13":"tag-new-york-headlines","14":"tag-new-york-news","15":"tag-shorttitle-the-inauguration-style-of-new-york-citys-new-first-lady"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87101"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87101\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}