How Kamala Harris’s Advice Shaped One Politico’s Approach to Fashion

Sometimes, an outfit critique sticks with you forever—especially if it’s made by current Democratic presidential nominee and sitting vice president Kamala Harris.

In a Vogue feature about the final weeks of Harris’s historic campaign, published Friday, California state senator Scott Wiener revealed the moment with his longtime colleague (he worked below Harris in the San Francisco city attorney’s office in the early 2000s and was a campaign volunteer for her winning bid for district attorney) that he carries with him nearly two decades later.

On Election Day in 2007, Wiener was the chair of the county Democratic Party and Harris was up for reelection as district attorney. “I stopped by the polls on the way to the gym, so I was in my gym clothes,” he said. “Kamala was there because she was on the ballot for reelection as district attorney, and, in classic Kamala fashion, she was perfectly put together and looked amazing.”

“I’m like, ‘Oh, hey, Kamala!’” he recalled.

For her part, she took in his gym-ready outfit. In short, she found it somewhat wanting—and she told him so.

“She’s like, ‘You need to look the part,’ and turns around and walks away,” he said. “It left a psychological imprint on me. Now I’m a state senator, and sometimes when I’m making a choice about how to dress—do I go a little more formal or a little more casual?—I hear Kamala’s voice in my head saying, ‘You need to look the part,’ and it helps me decide. Literally to this day. And that was 17 years ago.”

Another longtime friend and former colleague of Harris’s, Matthew Rothschild, also praised the candidate’s habitual composure. “I remember one time I saw her coming out of a dental surgery and she looked great,” he said.

Not that Harris doesn’t sweat it out herself—in fact, that’s what she was doing when she got the fateful call from President Joe Biden on July 21, telling her that he was halting his reelection bid and would endorse Harris in his place.

Harris told Vogue that she was hanging out with her visiting niece’s two young daughters (yes, the same ones who took the stage at the DNC to teach the world how to pronounce her name) that morning.

“We were the first ones to wake up in the house,” she explains. “They were talking with me while I was working out, and I had a cooking show on. That’s my way of getting away from politics—watching the food channel.”

The girls, the TV, and a waiting plateful of pancakes and bacon witnessed history when the phone rang. “This was a dramatic turn to the day,” Harris said.

The team—and Harris’s family, once husband Doug Emhoff emerged from that now-infamous Los Angeles SoulCycle class and was told to look at his phone—assembled. Emhoff told his children Cole and Ella about their stepmother’s change of plans, “just let them know what was going on and to strap in,” and back in DC, Harris and her advisors ordered pizza and buckled in for the ride they’re still on today.

“Everyone was just around the table doing some aspect of everything that needed to be done,” Harris said. “Because, of course, the world was aware of what happened that day.”

But, true to form, dressing the part, even in haste, was considered as the assembled group started ringing up officials to line up behind Harris: “The big joke around the table was, Who here had actually showered?” Harris said.