Michelle Obama Visits Ghana in July

WASHINGTON--The Daily Flotus Digest:



OFF TO GHANA

First Lady Michelle Obama will accompany President Obama to Accra, Ghana, from July 10 to July 11. It's not known yet whether she will travel with the president in the days preceding their Africa trip. The president visits Moscow from July 6 through July 8 followed by the G-8 Summit in L'Aquila, Italy, from July 8 to July 10.

The word from the East Wing is that June and July travel for the First Lady has yet to be locked in place. Heading into the Memorial Day weekend, Mrs. Obama has no more public events on her schedule this week.

Mrs. Obama's most recent Africa visit was in August, 2006, when she joined then Senator Obama in Kenya with their daughters and some friends.

The Obamas took very public tests for HIV/AIDS in the western Kenyan city of Kisumu in order to encourage men to be tested.


THE MICHELLE FA$HION IMPACT

Over at Womens Wear Daily, writer Sarah Haight computes whether Mrs. Obama's stylish tastes have given a boost to the fashion industry.

Writes Haight, "Certainly the breathless cataloguing of Michelle Obama's sartorial choices - from the $565 two-tone Lanvin sneakers she wore to a D.C. food bank in mid-May to the black Michael Kors sheath and Peter Soronen corset she donned for a recent Time gala - has shown no sign of abating since her husband took office in January.

"Along the way, those who produced the clothes, whether J. Crew or high-end designers (despite the kudos she has garnered for the former, Mrs. Obama has shown a considerable penchant for expensive stuff, too), have been catapulted into the limelight. But what impact has such triple-A-list exposure had on their businesses?"

So does all the fashion coverage about Mrs. Obama's style actually benefit the designers most closely associated with her--Isabel Toledo, Jason Wu, Thakoon Panichgul? The short answer from WWD: "not much at all, at least in terms of their bottom lines."

SCHOOL RENAMED FOR THE OBAMAS

In St. Paul, Minn., a school board, in a 5-1 vote, decided Tuesday to rename the Webster Magnet Elementary the "Barack and Michelle Obama Service Learning Elementary."

According to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the name change was sought to reflect a new mission for the school.

"We talk about, so often, that what we do is for the children, for kids," board member Tom Goldstein told the Star Tribune. "Our job is to inspire kids, and these kids got inspired. They went to the trouble to process and pick this name. They could have picked ...George Washington Carver, Martin Luther King, they could have picked Sojourner Truth; they didn't. They were inspired by Barack Obama."