FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT
NEW YORK — Le Obama sisters are they the new Olsen twins?Malia and Sasha, 24 and 21 years old respectively, they have become style icons on Instagram. They are compared to former child actresses Ashley and Mary-Kate Olsen (now 36), who have become priestesses of the American minimal style, whose paparazzi photos — monochromatic dresses, cigarettes smoked in the street, long blond hair that hasn’t been washed for a few days — were all the rage on Tumblr. «I’m so Olsen that I seem like a déjà-vu», writes the fashion and culture magazine The Faceabout some pictures of Malia smoking cigarettes staring with nonchalance the Los Angeles paparazzi.
Malia in soft pinstripes, large hooded sweatshirts and «boho braids», braids on loose and slightly wavy hair. Sasha hippie with giant dungarees, wide skirts and long nails «à la Cardi-B».
With Ashley and Mary-Kate Olsen, Malia and Sasha Obama have in common that they were the most famous sisters in the world for most of their lives. Moving into the White House at age ten and seven respectively is in some respects not too different from becoming a Hollywood actress at age six.
Mystery contributes to the success of their image. The Obamas are not on social mediahave not told in a memoir their years in the White House. They studied at Harvard and the University of Southern California and they have so far been spared the fiercest criticism of nepotism against the children of celebrities — the so-called “nepo-babies” — although probably without her surname Malia would have had a little more difficulty doing an internship at the Weinstein Company (a few months before the MeToo scandal) and meeting Donald Glover, for whom she wrote the series tv «Swarm» and with which he should soon make his debut as director of his first short film.
We know little about them, other than what the tabloids — or their mother — write. In the last book, «The light that is in us», Michelle Obama explains that last year Malia and Sasha moved in together in Los Angelesone for work and the other to attend the last year of university. While talking to Sasha one evening, her mother watched Malia dust (around objects, not moving them on shelves). When she and Barack visited, Sasha made cocktails and pulled out coasters, after years of marking tables, her mother notes, including those in the White House. In short, they live in their first home without their parents, after years in student dormitories. Michelle explains that her daughters are “in the age of the bazaar” in which they try relationships, flirts, friendships – and underlines that she cannot reveal more otherwise “they’ll kill me”. In addition to making them style icons, paparazzi photos take care of this. After the boy she met at Harvard, the Englishman Rory Farquharson, Malia is with the Ethiopian music producer Dawit Eklund, 33, son of a former State Department official in Africa; her and was photographed a couple of years ago chatting — smoking cigarettes — with her sister’s boyfriend, Clifton Powell Jr, who produces commercials for Nike. Michelle is their best pierre. She writes that she wishes they would enjoy their independence without feeling compelled to choose marriage or motherhood before learning who they really are.