President George Washington: Style Icon

President George Washington was born on this day 294 years ago – February 22, 1732.

Ivy Style has honored George Washington as a man of character. Today we celebrate our first President as a man of style.

Navy blazers and khaki pants have long been considered to be among the most iconic looks in the traditional gentleman’s wardrobe.

Did President Washington help to popularize this look? Fashion historian Chloe Chapin thinks so.

Chapin is the author of the forthcoming book Suitable: The Sartorial Revolution and the Fashioning of Modern Men.

Here is Chapin’s article titled “The George Washington” which was published in the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette on February 21, 2026.

The George Washington

by Chloe Chapin

Like migratory birds, they arrive every spring. The legs of the males are pale tan, the torso is a dark blue. They congregate all summer, and while some remain year-round, many will retreat when the leaves turn colors.
I’m talking about American men dressed in khakis and navy blazers. They’re staples at weddings and church services, and stalk offices that are still formal enough for a “casual Friday” dress code. As a historian, I see them when they flood the summer academic conferences in a sea of attire I call the “semiformal humanities.”

In the summer, this look might be worn with a white polo shirt and casual loafers. In the fall, button-down shirts and neckties return, joined by oxfords and sweaters as the weather turns cold. Eventually, the tan cotton khakis are replaced with charcoal wool slacks for the winter, only to return in the spring.

But why, out of all possible color combinations, does the American man gravitate to blue blazers and khaki pants? It turns out, this style has its roots in the American Revolution, a fashion that united the nation.
Of all the achievements history has attributed to George Washington, it’s remarkable that he hasn’t yet been credited for his fashion sense, since the two most long-lasting styles in modern menswear can be attributed to him.

As a young provincial officer in the British Army during the French and Indian War, Washington wore a blue coat with red facings, which he donned for a later portrait by Charles Willson Peale. This blue coat was a reminder of his resentment over being denied a full commission from the crown. When he couldn’t wear the proper red coat of a British officer, he also didn’t receive their status, recognition, or paycheck.

Repeatedly passed over for promotions and snubbed by British-born officers for being unsophisticated, Washington fumed over being treated like a second-class citizen. In 1757, he complained in a letter to his commander Robert Dinwiddie, “We cant conceive, that being Americans shoud deprive us of the benefits of British Subjects.” Frustrated, he resigned his commission the following year.

In July 1774, Washington and fellow Virginia planter George Mason drafted the Fairfax County Resolves, a radical statement of constitutional rights and rejection of Parliament’s authority over the colonies. Later that September, they founded the Fairfax Independent Company, a volunteer militia to enforce the principles of the resolves.
Washington still considered himself a loyal subject of the British crown, though staunchly opposed to the treatment the colonies were receiving under the Tory regime and its prime minister Frederick, Lord North. When it came time to choose uniform colors for the new company, Washington picked buff and blue because they were the colors of the Whigs, the British political party that opposed the Tories.

Washington and Mason decreed the company would “meet at such Times & Places in this County … dress’d in a regular Uniform of Blue, turn’d up with Buff; with plain yellow metal buttons, Buff Waist Coat & Breeches, & white Stockings.”

In April 1775, less than a year after Washington announced the Fairfax resolves, skirmishes between colonial militia and the British army at Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts ignited the American Revolutionary War. In May, when Washington set off for Philadelphia to attend the Second Continental Congress, he wore his buff and blue uniform.

When the delegates chose Washington as commander in chief for the new Continental Army, he kept his own uniform design, which he wore for the remainder of the war.

Washington’s military portraits showcase this uniform, including “General George Washington Resigning His Commission,” the painting by John Trumbull that has hung in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda since 1824. Washington stands center; the two men behind him, Cols. Benjamin Walker and David Humphries, are dressed in the same style of uniform, adopted by his aides de-camp to visually align themselves with the general.

In this painting, Trumbull also depicted men wearing buff and blue in civilian dress, referencing Washington’s uniform.

The French also associated buff and blue with Americans and democracy. On July 12, 1789, two days before the storming of the Bastille, French journalist Camille Desmoulins leaped onto a table in the garden of the Palais Royal, urged the crowd to take up arms and coaxed them to adopt cockades as a symbol of their own revolution. He asked the crowd if they would prefer “green, the color of hope,” or the “blue of Cincinnatus,” referring to Washington; the color by then was understood to be a symbol of American liberty and democracy. Washington had turned a color of politics and diplomacy into a campaign for freedom.

Perhaps one reason that khaki pants and navy blazers are still so popular among Americans is that it subtly conjures a simpler time before politics were splintered into parties, when we were united behind the cause of the buff and blue.

This summer, when the nation hosts barbecues in honor of the country’s 250th anniversary, Americans can raise their light beers, hot dogs and strawberry shortcakes to George Washington. He leaves behind a complicated legacy, but got many things right. He prioritized America’s welfare over his personal interests. He warned against the dangers of political factions. And he cautioned the country to maintain a limit on executive power. Between his character and his costume, Washington was more than a Founding Father — he was America’s first fashion icon.