Did Michelle Obama dress up as a cheap knock-off for Halloween?

The Huffington Post may have slobbered all over Michelle Obama’s choice of an “orange, gold and black striped dress from the Diane von Furtsenberg Fall 2011 collection” for the White House Halloween events, but there’s something awfully suspicious about the DvF that Michelle wore. As in, it doesn’t actually appear to be the DvF version of a DvF dress from the fall 2011 collection.

This is the dress that Michelle Obama wore:

And this is the dress that Neiman Marcus claims is Diane von Furstenberg’s 2011 fall collection. Notice a few differences?

Yep. The dress that the First Lady is wearing isn’t actually an original Diane von Furstenberg at all. It’s this knock-off of this particular DvF dress made by internet retailer ASOS – the ASOS Midi Body-Conscious Dress in Metallic Stripe, priced at a budget-conscious $71.88 (though its currently sold out).

Now, it wouldn’t be such a big deal that the First Lady is wearing ASOS – she’s a fan of the label, like a lot of celebrities, and she’s worn it before – but it’s the fact that it’s a knockoff of DvF, a well-known and well-respected American designer, that’s really the problem. You see, Diane is the President of Council of Fashion Designers of America, and has used her position to champion design protection for designers who have been victims of copyright infringement, such as this ASOS knock-off of her own design. She has been instrumental in supporting legislation that would define fashion as a form of copyright-protected art and give recourse to designers whose work is stolen, copied and sold for cheap. She’s even written extensively on the subject for major American newspapers.

So yeah, it’s a little weird that, of all the knockoffs Michelle could have selected from ASOS’s website – and there are more than a few – she really hit the nail on the head with this one.