Politically Correct.(Editorial)

Byline: Linda Wells, Editor in Chief

Carla Bruni, once a saucy model and now the First Lady of France, has sold her fashionable soul. In news photographs of official functions, she's wearing shift dresses...in gray...with flats, as if she were the reluctant star in the world's most apologetic fashion show. The clothes look as much like costumes as the thigh-slit dresses and S&M leather getups she wore on the runways in the '90s. At least then, this world-class siren seemed to be having fun.

Bruni looks like she got her inspiration for the role of adoring wife by looking back at adoring wives from nearly 50 years ago. You have to give her credit: She plays the role beautifully; the press hailed her visit with Queen Elizabeth II as a triumph. But it looks as if her personality has been hijacked by an anachronism. Like so many wives of powerful (and short, and perhaps not entirely secure) men, she's stuck in frumpy shoes and bland colors--reduced to a lovely prop.

Meanwhile, on the runways in Milan and Paris, designers brought back the power suit with its broad shoulders and nipped waists. In platform shoes that would put them at eye level with Shaquille O'Neal, the models were fierce and major and genius, as fashion people like to say. But they were caricatures of power all the ...