As the wife of the newly installed Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance, Usha Chilukuri Vance has generated a lot of interest beyond the political spectrum.
The online interest was boosted by the 38-year-old lawyer’s introductory remarks at Wednesday night’s Republican Convention in Milwaukee. Having resigned as a litigator at Munger, Tolles & Olson, the mother of three has been foisted into the media glare not just for her marital connection, but also her own background and her fashion sense.
Before welcoming Donald Trump’s running mate to the stage, Vance spoke of her upbringing in San Diego as one of two daughters born to Indian American parents. Her father is an aerospace engineer and her mother is a provost at the University of California San Diego. Wearing a cobalt blue Badgley Mischka dress, Vance described meeting her future husband as students at Yale University’s Law School years ago and how they became friends first. Noting how the former Marine attended with the support of the GI Bill, she said that he is still “the most interesting person” that she knows.
Vance described the “Hillbilly Elegy” author as “a working-class guy, who had overcome childhood traumas that I could barely fathom to end up at Yale Law School, a tough Marine who had served in Iraq, but whose idea of a good time was playing with puppies and watching the movie ‘Babe.’”
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Usha Vance, who also earned an undergraduate degree at Yale and a post-graduate one at the University of Cambridge, said, “That J.D. and I could meet at all, let alone fall in love and marry is a testament to this great country,” she said. “It is also a testament to J.D., and it tells you something about who he is.”
She said, “It’s safe to say that neither J.D. nor I expected to find [ourselves] in this position, but it’s hard to imagine a more powerful example of the American Dream, a boy from Middletown, Ohio.”
Like two other key speakers at this week’s convention, Lara Trump, the RNC’s co-chair, and Nikki Haley, former Republican presidential candidate and former United Nations ambassador Haley went with blue fashion-wise instead of the more expected Republican red. Trump, who is married to Eric Trump, wore a sleeveless royal blue Chiara Boni La Petite Robe dress for her speech Monday night at Fiserv Forum.
Vance’s draped off-the-shoulder midi dress retails for $495 and is available at Saks Fifth Avenue among other retailers. While some political figures work directly with designers or through stylists, Vance did not consult with Badgley Mischka’s Mark Badgley and James Mischka. She must have purchased the frock on her own at retail, said a Badgley Mischka spokesman.
The New York-based designers were traveling and were unavailable for comment Thursday, he said.
