By Carrie Budoff Brown, Politico - February 1, 2008

The last recorded sighting was in the subfreezing cornfields of Iowa.

It was there that Sen. Barack Obama lost his no-tie, open-collar style — a trademark look celebrated by fashion critics.

The 46-year-old Illinois senator, who long faced questions about the depth of his experience, gradually shed his casual Friday attire for the suit-and-tie look of a president as his poll numbers surged through December.

His wardrobe went the way of buttoned-up Washington. It was an unceremonious and largely overlooked transition, considering the focus in this election cycle to the physical quirks of presidential candidates, from pricey haircuts to an alleged cleavage sighting on C-SPAN.

But based on a month-long search of images from such places as Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina, it appears the “Obama look” (dubbed so by The Wall Street Journal) finally succumbed after a prolonged battle with the pastel necktie. It was more than a year old.

Obama aides insist the demise of the tieless look was neither premeditated nor calculated.

Despite the media attention paid last year to Obama’s casual campaign trail style, Robert Gibbs, one of Obama’s top advisers, reacted as if it was news to him that such an adjustment had even occurred.

“It may have had something to do with the weather,” Gibbs said, shrugging. “I don’t know.”

David Axelrod, Obama's chief strategist, didn't offer a simple answer.

“We entered the more formal part of the campaign,” Axelrod explained. “For the events we were doing, it seemed appropriate.”

But Obama was last photographed on the campaign trail without a tie on Dec. 28, according to the Getty Images archive. And he was doing the same rallies and town hall meetings as he had for months.

“It was a warm weather look,” Axelrod said of the shift away from tieless suits.

But temperatures in Iowa and New Hampshire, where Obama was spending most of his time, had already been hovering around freezing for weeks.

“He got the memo late,” Axelrod responded with a smile. “He is still the same Obama.”

Political and image consultants, who get paid to mull and make such seemingly inane decisions, don’t buy into Obama’s nonchalance.

“There is nothing that isn’t calculated,” said Evangelia Souris, a Boston image consultant. “Everything is strategy, especially with your image, from the type of haircut to the type of shoes to the cut of the suit. Don’t let them fool you about that.”

Brian Kirwin, a Virginia political strategist who makes a living worrying about suit colors and tie choices, said he took note of the transition — and the timing was instructive.

“People were going to go to the polls,” Kirwin said. “For a year, up to the point that it got close to the primaries, he was personality, the common man, I-am-like-you, Kennedyesque.

“But when [rival Hillary Rodham] Clinton started hammering him on qualifications, credibility and not being ready for office, you had to firm that up,” Kirwin added. “He had to look the part. Suits started showing up.”

Image is as much a part of campaigning as policy. Candidates dress like the voters they are trying to court. They dress to deflect criticism of something they’re not.

Former Sen. John Edwards wore Levis and work shirts to connect with the low-income and blue-collar voters who formed his base.

But he also had to overcome the narrative of him as a wealthy trial lawyer who lived in a mansion, indulged in a $400 haircut and worked for a hedge fund.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney showed up at a South Florida rally last weekend in a guayabera, the traditional Cuban men’s shirt.

It was an abrupt wardrobe change for Romney, who is far better known for his love of starched button downs than Latin American linen.

Obama wore suits and ties for TV interviews and debates. On the campaign trail, he almost always opted for an open collar.

If he wanted to convey a laid-back and youthful image, it worked.

“He is tieless and relaxed and oh so cool,” wrote The New York Times about his announcement video last January.

Ten months later, The Times was still gushing.

“Obama was sitting across from me in one of the leather bucket seats of the walnut-trimmed corporate jet the campaign had just leased,” a writer for The New York Times Magazine wrote in November.

“He has a look as cool and unruffled as his velvety tenor. He was tieless, as always, and his white shirt billowed around his trim frame; not even the tiniest crease marred his pale khaki linen pants.”

The Washington Post weighed in, calling the tieless suit the “most distinctive style in the Obama repertoire.”

“The look is not exactly business casual,” fashion critic Robin Givhan wrote on Dec. 14. “It's a cross between the style of a 1950s home-from-the-office dad and a 1990s GQ man about town. It is warmly, safely, nostalgically . . . cool. Has that tiny word ever been applied to a presidential candidate?”

But eventually Obama needed to show he was more electable than hip, and a change was quietly in the works.

On the same day as The Washington Post piece appeared, The Swamp blog, which is written by Chicago Tribune reporters, noted that Obama “has worn a tie with his dark suit all day, even though he has been mostly in small towns and rural areas where ties are few and far between.”

Gibbs told the blog that Obama wanted to keep his neck warm on a cold day.

Within two weeks, as he caught Clinton in the Iowa polls, the open collar had vanished completely from the Obama repertoire. It was survived by a panoply of soft color palette neckwear.