September is only half over, but already it’s been quite a month for Ella Emhoff, the model-designer stepdaughter of Kamala Harris.
Early this month, Emhoff was named a fashion “icon” by Harper’s Bazaar Magazine in its 2022 Icons issue, which celebrates “a rising generation of stars—people 30 years old or younger—who are making an impact on the world through their ideas and their art.”
The very next day, Emhoff walked the runway during New York Fashion Week for designer Prabal Gurung. People magazine breathlessly reported that Emhoff wore a “diaphanous green halter top that revealed her breast and full midriff.” The magazine gushed that Ella, 23, is a fashion icon “who does not cover her tattoos or shave her armpits, [and] is pioneering a new outlier standard” for modeling. “She just does herself, and that’s the message,” says her fashion writer boyfriend Sam Hine. “She is a true individual. And that’s the most important. That’s what being an icon really is.”
An icon—at age 23? Mmmmkay. I guess I’m glad for her that she’s confident and likes herself. But what exactly has Emhoff done in the 18 months since people first saw her at the presidential inauguration to make such an unforgettable impact? What has been so significant about her “ideas and art?”
Nobody knew who Ella Emhoff was before January 2021. When Kamala Harris was sworn in as vice president, Emhoff was a senior at the Parsons School of Design. At the Inauguration, she caught the eye of friendly media in her Miu Miu tweed coat. She was wearing a mask, so it certainly wasn’t her face that garnered the attention. But within two weeks, Emhoff had been signed to the prestigious IMG Models, which represents Gisele. Since then, she has walked in fashion shows for big brands like Balenciaga. She’s the face of Stella McCartney. She has launched her own knitwear line and attended the Met Gala. It doesn’t get much more meteoric than that. And yet—why?
Was it the nip slip at Fashion Week, or the armpit hair, or the 18-and-counting low-quality tattoos? She’s tall, that’s true, and she can clean up to look moderately pretty, but what am I missing here? She isn’t the typical runway quality model. New York City is full of beautiful young girls waiting tables looking for their big break. Emhoff herself admits that she has never really seen herself as a model, with her “funky haircut” and “weird tattoos.” And from her nearly naked modeling appearances, it’s plain for all to see that her physique isn’t the toned, slim, idealized female form usually seen on the fashion runway. Not to be unkind, but she’s odd looking—like a glassy-eyed, unibrowed Weird Al Yankovic East Village dweller with Harry Potter glasses and a gangly, soft, lumpen-legged, awkward body.
So why is she suddenly the darling of the fashion world?
Maybe it’s her knitwear, which she sells on Etsy. She knits “one of a kind items” like a Tweety Bird purse and $400 bright striped knit pants. In February 2021, just a few weeks after Inauguration Day and before she had even graduated from design school, she sold out her first collection online within 30 minutes according to the New York Times. She raffled off a few pairs of her knit pants on her Instagram, and in order to purchase a raffle ticket, she required people to donate at least $10 to For the Gworls or The Okra Project, two organizations that work to support black trans people. I guess that’s a peek at her “ideas.”
But there’s an easy explanation, and it’s one that is obvious to everybody.
I grew up in the 1980s during the era of the supermodel: women such as Cindy Crawford, Linda Evangelista, and Christy Turlington. Objectively beautiful women who exuded glamor and pageantry, who were walking embodiments of beauty and elegance. They were muses to designers, artists, and musicians, and inspired ordinary women to want to buy clothes that just might make them look like they did. That’s who I think of when I hear “runway model.”
And yes, I get it: fashion can be quirky. It’s always searching for what is new and fresh, and occasionally finds beauty in things that are not conventionally attractive. The French even have a phrase for it: jolie laide. Loosely translated, it means “pretty-ugly” but in truth, it is more about the eye that is required to find beauty in the unique.
But that’s not what this is. On her own, there is no way Ella Emhoff is a runway model or successful designer. Ella Emhoff is no Gisele or Cindy Crawford. This is nepotism, pure and simple.
Ella Emhoff has been thrust onto the national stage because she’s related to Kamala Harris. The mainstream media loves Kamala Harris, and they consider themselves opinion makers, so the American public has to love her too. She doesn’t have children, so stepdaughter Emhoff has been introduced to make Kamala appear maternal. She is being flattered, fawned over, and given lucrative modeling contracts not because of her physical beauty, or incredible style, but because of politics. And Emhoff herself has the “right” kind of activist politics, so the media that interviews and photographs her will assure us she’s a beautiful, talented, iconic visionary. Don’t believe your lying eyes, you little people. She’s beautiful.
It’s just more gaslighting. Kamala Harris’ stepdaughter is an iconic model in the same way that Hunter Biden is a talented artist, Jill Biden is a doctor, and Joe Biden is a great family man and the “most popular president ever.” The media pushes their leftist agenda on everything, even fashion. Jill Biden, arguably the worst dressed first lady in history, gets featured on the cover of Vogue while the former first lady (who actually was a model) was shut out of any fashion magazine covers. Melania Trump isn’t a model, but Emma Emhoff is. See how that works?
The lefist agenda tears down everything which is excellent, or true, or beautiful. It has permeated every aspect of American culture, including sports, books, movies, and now even fashion. Ugly is beautiful, men are women, morbidly obese is healthy. The poet John Keats wrote “Beauty is truth, truth beauty. That is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.” Well, not anymore. Beauty is what leftists and throne sniffing Vogue and New York Times reporters tell you is beautiful.
But nobody is buying it. Read any of the comments on any article about Ella Emhoff. The leftist lunacy that sees her as a fashion icon certainly doesn’t match the opinion of anyone I know. Nobody but New York Times fashion reporters and liberal suburban wine moms are buying it. Because what’s going on here is so obvious, like the acne, mole, and faint mustache on her face. Like ugly striped $400 pants and armpit hair, you can’t make normal Americans like it.