ADRIAN FLORIDO, HOST:
Twelve years ago today, a scandal rocked the nation.
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UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: When President Obama spoke with reporters Thursday, he also made a fashion statement.
FLORIDO: CBS and plenty of other networks noted it.
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PETER KING: Here's a president coming out at such a serious moment where he should be addressing the country on such a serious matter, and he looked like he was on his way to a party at the Hamptons.
FLORIDO: On CNN, then-Representative Peter King, a Republican, took issue with the fact that President Obama was speaking to the press in not traditional dark gray or navy attire, but in a summer outfit, a tan suit. Conservative commentators ran with it. Here's Lou Dobbs on Fox Business.
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LOU DOBBS: The president is so neatly attired normally that I think it was shocking to a lot of people.
FLORIDO: For the record, Presidents Reagan and Clinton also wore tan suits. Online, people joked, yes we tan or the audacity of taupe. The absurd scandal eventually died down, but it has lived on in our nation's memory. This year, when the Obama Presidential Center opened in Chicago, a lot of people expected the tan suit to be on display, but it was not because no one knows what happened to it. So one reporter has set out on a mission to find it. That is Lynn Sweet of the Chicago Sun-Times, and she joins us now. Welcome, Lynn.
LYNN SWEET: Thanks for having me.
FLORIDO: I want to ask an obvious question. What happened to the suit?
SWEET: Well, at a press preview June 3, that question came up, and Valerie Jarrett, who is the CEO of the Obama Foundation, longtime friend of the president, said to everybody's surprise...
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VALERIE JARRETT: The reason we don't have the tan suit is President Obama gave it away when he was cleaning out his closet. But we thought about a replica, but that would not be authentic. And so, yeah, we do not have the tan suit.
SWEET: And by the way, a footnote, Obama wore that suit when he attended the wedding of Valerie Jarrett's daughter.
FLORIDO: How do you even start a search for something like this? I mean, I imagine an obvious first step would be to ask Obama what he did with the suit.
SWEET: I always do the obvious, and that didn't work. I started where a lot of journalists and even human beings start on a very tough assignment, and that is you put it off. So after I...
FLORIDO: (Laughter) We all (Inaudible).
SWEET: Right? You know that. I think I was - you know, you teach it. But after I got over it, I realized I had to just start making phone calls, and I made a list of 68 people to call. And then I had a foundational insight, which is start at the beginning, who made the suit. And it turns out a fascinating story because a man by the name of Martin Greenfield made the suit. Martin Greenfield died two years ago, was a very famous Brooklyn tailor. But he got his start - as he wrote in his memoir, his first tailoring lesson in Auschwitz, hardly the ideal apprenticeship. But he went on to survive Auschwitz and Birkenau, come to America, become a master tailor and have a shop that still exists today. So as part of the series, the origin of the origin of the suit is a fascinating story.
It's not like finding a needle in a haystack because I have found needles. But in this case, I don't even know where the haystack is.
FLORIDO: So how are you going about trying to track it down now?
SWEET: Well, maybe one of your listeners who lives in the Washington area, they're 40 long and about a 33 waist, they might have...
FLORIDO: (Laughter).
SWEET: ...Gotten it at some second hand store in the area because I believe that's where it might have been donated. I can identify the suit if you think you have it. Here's the email - tansuit@suntimes.com. Email, and I'll get right back to you. Put in the subject line - I'm wearing the suit. And if I may add, People listening to us may have thought they just saw that tan suit in a recent episode on HBO's Larry David show, where he mocks historic events.
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LARRY DAVID: You know what? I got an idea that just might interest you.
BARACK OBAMA: What's your idea?
DAVID: I think...
OBAMA: Yeah.
DAVID: ...You should wear the tan suit to the press conference.
OBAMA: For this press conference?
DAVID: Yes.
SWEET: In the finale, in the last skit of all things, President Obama plays himself in a very comic schtick about why he wore the tan suit to begin with.
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OBAMA: You sure about this?
DAVID: Never been more sure about anything in my life.
OBAMA: OK. I'll be back.
DAVID: People are going to be talking about this for a long, long time.
SWEET: That tan suit is a dead ringer for the real thing, but it's not. It's a look alike. So I know some people may say, Lynn, what are you up to? Yes? Didn't you watch the show? And yes, and I've done the reporting. It's a look alike, not the real thing.
FLORIDO: I bet you have to learn a lot about how the president of the United States dresses himself to figure out what might have happened to it.
SWEET: Well, here's one thing that is interesting because for people who are presidential historians, there is no detail too small. And one of the things is that President Obama did migrate from wearing, I believe the manufacturer was Hart Schaffner Marx, a very famous Illinois manufacturer with its roots in Chicago, to wanting to wear hand-stitched custom made suits. He - was important to him that these custom suits though be made in America.
FLORIDO: Why do you think we still remember this scandal, if you want to call it that, so clearly? What has made the tan suit controversy live on in our memories all these years later?
SWEET: When I talked to Colleen Shogan, who's the former archivist of the United States, and I asked her a question like that. She said that perhaps the tans suit controversy was, quote, "emblematic," close quote, of the challenges Obama faced as the first African American president of the country. He was under a great deal of scrutiny about acting presidential. And that's why this episode lives on.
It's also because unlike other presidents who wore tan suits, in particular Ronald Reagan, you know, this suit happened in a time of cable news, in a time of social media that could make it live on. I also want to call to your attention, though, as the years have gone by, Obama has embraced this suit. He's joked about it through the years.
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OBAMA: I was sorely tempted to wear a tan suit today...
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OBAMA: ...For my last press conference, but...
SWEET: And when his good friend Marty Nesbitt, who's the chair of the Obama Foundation, spoke at the dedication of the Obama Center on June 18, lo and behold, he walks on the stage...
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MARTY NESBITT: How y'all like my tan suit?
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: That is sharp.
NESBITT: It was inspired by a very good friend of mine.
SWEET: You know, a tan suit, striped tie, white shirt. In the crowd, Stephen Colbert, David Letterman also wearing tan suits because it also turns out that Stephen Colbert, in one of his last shows in May, he's at the museum. He's talking to Obama. He holds up a picture of Obama at that famous press conference, and he said, is the tan suit here? And, you know, and it isn't.
FLORIDO: How far and long and wide are you prepared to take this search? Are you gonna keep searching until you find it?
SWEET: How long am I prepared to make it? So as I speak to you on this day, I don't know. I know that I haven't tried hard enough yet to say I can't find it. So I'm not necessarily obsessed. I'm just on the hunt.
FLORIDO: Well, I wish you the best of luck. I would love to see it turn up. I've been speaking with Lynn Sweet of the Chicago Sun-Times. Thanks for joining us, and happy hunting.
SWEET: Thanks for having me.
(SOUNDBITE OF ZZ TOP SONG, "SHARP DRESSED MAN") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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