Every store is screaming at you to buy a party dress – or dancing shoes, or a velvet suit – but I beg to differ

I am all in favour of getting the festive season started as early as possible. I get an actual physical thrill out of booking my Christmas food delivery slot in September, and the morning after Halloween I fire the starting gun on mince pie season. I know it makes me sound deranged and/or six years old, but I just absolutely love everything about Christmas. I’m here for all of it and I want it now.

But fashion? That’s my one holdout. At this time of year every store is screaming at you to buy a party dress – or dancing shoes, or a velvet suit – but I beg to differ.

The 28-year-old artist’s style steers clear of the political wife cosplay of pastel skirt suits in favor of something more playful and youthful, yet still elegant

It is the most traditional of assets for any ambitious young male politician: a fashionably dressed, beautiful young wife. But as with everything else about the rise of Zohran Mamdani, his wife, Rama Duwaji, represents a new era of politics which speaks to a new generation of voters.

Married to the soon-to-be leader of the biggest city in the US, Duwaji, 28, is arguably the US’s first generation Z “first lady”. Duwaji is an artist and illustrator of Syrian heritage, whose work explores themes of Arab identity, female experience and social justice. Working in paint, line-drawing, ceramics and animation, she graduated with a master’s degree in fine art from New York’s School of Visual Arts in 2024. Her thesis was titled Sahtain!, an Arabic expression which translates as “bon appetit”, and explored the communal act of making and sharing a dish and its role in Middle Eastern culture.