“For Claire, it’s always been about power, control, trust, trying to win everyone over to her side,” Harris adds. “She wants to be streamlined and unfussy and her wardrobe really reflects that.”
This is but the latest as-seen-on-TV female POTUS wardrobe: Underwood joins Homeland’s President Elizabeth Keane and Scandal’s President Mellie Grant, which have paved the fictional landscape before her. And viewers will recognize a lot of the same sartorial references on House of Cards as they saw on Homeland and Scandal.
To outfit President Keane, costume designer Katina Le Kerr says that, like Harris, she looked at the clothing of current politicians, as well as that of female leaders from different industries—“community leaders across the country, Washington, D.C., pros, international leaders, and Fortune 500 CEOs”—throughout history. “I studied which women wore pantsuits, which wore skirt suits,” she recalls.
