I'm not looking for racism behind every tree, but I'm not so quick to give these folks a pass. Wouldn't skin color have a bearing on envisioning what a particular color might look like on someone, and wouldn't build have a bearing on what style might work? We're not dressing Barbie Goes to the Inaugural here.

i guess if it mattered in life, but it doesn't..only to the shallow...

Actually, skin tone DOES matter in real life as far as whether a particular colored garment looks good on a person. I'm sure that's one of the first lessons in fashion school. I remember hearing often about how red-heads generally shouldn't wear pink, and how dark-skinned people look lovely in bright colors and whites or beiges, whereas a pale skinned person might look washed out in light beige. So I agree, an accurately skin-toned person in the sketch would probably better help the viewer understand how the garment will look against the real person's skin.

But I'm not sure any of this has anything to do with racism; just seems like a less-than-detailed designer issue.

Its not racism, its design principles. A lovely dark cmplexion looks better with certain colors and lines. Just as a red-headed Irish lass looks best in certain colors, and blondes with alabaster skin need to avoid some tones. People who have no artistic sense should just trust those of us who do.

These are not portraits they are merely abstract representations of whats in the designer's head. Most of them only point to a shape or a color for inspiration. Despite the fact that they didn't color in the face with a generic medium brown pencil (Should crayola have come out with a "michelle brown" pencil for this?!) I guarantee you that in choosing the colors for their dress these designers took her skin tone into account. Give it up haters, you don't know anything about designing clothes and sketching. This is yet another instance of misdirected calling of the race card. There are still serious problems in our world with racism, why not deal with them? I guess its that true racism is an incredibly difficult issue to solve, whereas pointing your finger at nothing doesn't even require getting off the couch.

I'm not a designer or anything, but do the colors these designers used work with michelle's real life skin tone? If so, it seems like they had it in mind and just didn't care enough to make it accurate because it is a sketch.

I also noticed that some of the sketches seemed to have no relationship to Michelle Obama's actual body. Several of the sketches made her look like a model - very tall, pencil thin, with no hips or breasts. A dress that would look good on that body type might not look good on someone with a more curvy figure.

I suspect many of these designers are so accustomed to designing for a particular body type, that they just do it automatically - they only think of their clothes as being worn by someone with the body type of Kate Moss.