New year, new mayor.
Zohran Mamdani’s inauguration ceremony was held Thursday afternoon at NYC’s City Hall, with guests including Sen. Bernie Sanders, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Attorney General Letitia James and former mayors Bill de Blasio and Eric Adams braving the freezing temperatures for the outdoor event.
Mamdani’s wife and the city’s new first lady, artist Rama Duwaji, dressed the part in a high-collared brown coat trimmed with fur at the cuffs and hem and a pair of tall lace-up boots with sturdy block heels.
Sculptural silver earrings, understated makeup and a maroon-colored manicure completed the first lady’s look.
It was a fitting complement to Duwaji’s outfit for Mamdani’s swearing-in during the first minutes of the new year; standing alongside her husband in an abandoned subway station near City Hall, the Syrian-American creative wore a similar funnel-neck, button-front coat in black, along with a matching knee-length skirt, several pieces of bold gold jewelry and what appeared to be Miista boots that laced up the back.
At 28, Duwaji is NYC’s first Gen Z first lady as well as its first Muslim first lady. And over the course of Mamdani’s campaign, she’s chosen to eschew established fashion brands in favor of smaller, independent ones that communicate her values and align with her husband’s democratic socialist platform.
At Mamdani’s election-night victory party at the Brooklyn Paramount Theater in November, for instance, Duwaji wore a laser-cut denim top from Palestinian designer Zeid Hijazi, which she paired with a lacy velvet skirt by Manhattan native Ulla Johnson and silver spike earrings by NYC jeweler Eddie Borgo.
Even the dress she wore for her courthouse wedding last year — a vintage ivory lace slip styled with beat-up black riding boots and a pair of $122 earrings from Indian designer Bhavya Ramesh — defied convention for a future first lady.
Presumably in an effort to keep the public’s focus firmly on politics and away from her fashion choices, Duwaji exclusively wore muted colors and simple silhouettes throughout Mandani’s campaign. That tactic extended to her first (and so far, only) major interview, a cover story for the Cut that saw the illustrator posing in a series of subdued styles from Marc Jacobs, Jacquemus, Diotima, Ashlyn and Peter Do (all loaned for the shoot, as noted in the credits).
Now that she’s officially the city’s first lady and has made the jump from Astoria to the Upper East Side, how might Duwaji’s wardrobe evolve? One thing’s for sure: You won’t catch her in a plain designer pantsuit anytime soon.
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