What Mayor Zohran Mamdani Wore to His First Day of Work
Made of handwoven, lightly textured eri silk, the custom tie was created by the New Delhi-based designer Kartik Kumra under his label, Kartik Research, and selected for the occasion by stylist and former Vogue editor Gabriella Karefa-Johnson. It was fitting that Karefa-Johnson should be the one to style New York’s newest political family—an announcement she made this week via her Substack, “Brain Matter,” a medium that feels perfectly congruent with the youthful momentum of the mayor’s appointment. The stylist, like Mamdani and his wife, the artist Rama Duwaji, has been outspoken regarding her progressive political views (many of which align with that of the new mayor’s) and has accrued some notable firsts of her own. Five years ago last month, she became the first Black woman to style an American Vogue cover, dressing the model Paloma Elsesser for the magazine’s January 2021 issue; she also styled then-Vice President Kamala Harris for her Vogue cover several months later. Plus, the brand story of Kartik Research feels especially fitting for a young mayor with Indian roots who grew up in NYC; last year, Kumra opened his first US store on Orchard Street in downtown Manhattan.
For Mamdani’s private inaugural ceremony, held underground in the Old City Hall station downtown in the early hours of Thursday morning, the stylist employed her strategic savoir faire in a manner that only enhanced our perception of the city’s young mayor. As she wrote in her newsletter, owns two pairs of boots and sources his suits from a popular purveyor: Suitsupply. (Lest we forget, Barack Obama wore Brooks Brothers to his presidential inauguration in 2009.) He’s of Indian heritage and a people-first politician, and his tie effectively references those simple truths through its origins and gold floral embroidering—a wink, per Karefa-Johnson, at one of the city’s beloved mayors and a fellow progressive legislator, Fiorello La Guardia, who expanded public housing, fought for laborers, and was known, affectionately, as the “little flower.”
And on his wrist, as per usual, the mayor wore his preferred Casio watch.
During the private ceremony, holding Mamdani’s grandfather’s Quran was the mayor’s wife, Duwaji, 28, who was also dressed by Karefa-Johnson. The city’s new first lady wore a secondhand Balenciaga coat, pointy leather boots from the London-based label Miista (which, as Karefa-Johnson clarified in her post, were a loan from the brand), and tailored shorts from The Frankie Shop. Later in the day, for Mamdani’s public inauguration, she wore a brown fur-tiered coat by Palestinian-Lebanese designer Cynthia Merhej of Renaissance, Renaissance, a look that evoked the elegance of Jackie O., thoughtfully updated for a new, politically passionate generation.
