“It was cool,” says the 28-year-old viral TikToker and Fashion Institute of Technology graduate Joe Ando, on seeing his creation live on TV at the Democratic National Convention last week. “I wish I had a better word to describe it than cool.”
It was the dress of the night — a pale blue silk off-the-shoulder bodice and a hand-ruched tulle midi skirt. Its wearer, of course, was Ella Emhoff, Vice President Kamala Harris’ stepdaughter and potential next first daughter of the US. “My brain is always under the assumption it’s not that big of a deal,” Ando told CNN via Zoom from his home in Brooklyn, New York. “She needs a dress and she wears it, and people will watch this event but it won’t really be about what she’s wearing. But this was so public.”
The dress was deemed “White House-worthy” by streetwear and fashion blog Highsnobiety, while Vogue mused whether it solidified Emhoff as one of “America’s next fashion ambassadors.” The 25-year-old’s gown seemed to embody a new era of power dressing — one where women don’t need to dress masculine in order to look and feel strong. “I wanted her to stick out, but in a way that was still very elegant and distinguished, and not obnoxious,” said Ando, who said the dress took between 70 and 90 hours to make. “We wanted it to feel like an elegant tea party… a modern princess moment.”
But Ando didn’t see the final look until it was broadcast live on TV, since his and Emhoff’s schedules aligned for just one midnight fitting before her morning flight to Chicago. “She did the fitting with us at midnight, then there were like four hours worth of edits that had to be made,” he said. “I went back to my studio, got it to her at 7 a.m. and then I only got to really see if those edits worked when she walked on stage.”
Outfits by independent designers can sometimes be found on political campaign trails, for those keen-eyed enough to spot them. Eschewing the traditional names of Ralph Lauren, Carolina Herrera and Oscar de la Renta, smaller brands can help those in the limelight to communicate nuanced messaging by supporting emerging talent. At the 2021 inauguration of President Joe Biden, Harris arrived in a Pyer Moss camel coat by Kerby Jean-Raymond — a young Black designer rewriting social narratives around race. First Lady Dr. Jill Biden regularly made a point of wearing smaller, homegrown New York-based designers such as Markarian and Adam Lippes during a time when the industry was recovering from the fallout of COVID-19.
Not only did Emhoff, who is a knitwear designer herself, choose to wear an independent label on the final day of the convention; she had a heavy hand in the finished product. “It was super collaborative,” said Ando, who usually receives minimal feedback from his clients. “But with her, she was very involved.” He sent her several skirt silhouette variations and every fabric option, no matter how slight the difference. “She wanted to see everything. She gave a lot of time to it and was a big part of the design, honestly.”
Before he was designing for the family member of a presidential nominee, Ando was fashioning one-of-a-kind dresses for any celebrity he could find. Armed with a tiny mic, a bashful attitude and an impressive 2.9 million TikTok followers, Ando filmed himself approaching celebrities asking if he could make them a dress. His videos feature everyone from actors Dakota Johnson to Rachel Zegler and Keke Palmer. What ensues is a homespun montage of his sewing process, and often followed by a gratifying try-on reveal.
While he still posts his clumsy dressmaking advances onlines, in reality most of Ando’s work today comes from direct requests made by movie studios and record labels. He also has a lot of clients that he can’t talk about. “A lot of celebrities have a lot of things to worry about,” he said. “(They) have contracts with big fashion brands where a lot of the time they can’t wear other brands at risk of being sued. There’s so many moving parts.” Not every A-lister is up to the task of appearing in one of his TikTok videos either. “For those people, as nice as they are and as gracious as I am that they hired me to do stuff, they might not want to dance in front of a camera. And that’s so reasonable.”
Most young designers get their start through traditional runway shows, with only a lucky few going on to dress celebrities for the odd red carpet event. Ando, by contrast, has built an impressively starry client roster and millions of followers before even launching a brand. (His namesake label will eventually launch in Spring 2025). “Yeah, we did it flipped,” he said.
While Emhoff’s princess frock spawned headlines across the internet, many attributed the look simply to “That TikTok Guy” — a reduction that doesn’t seem to bother Ando. “I don’t need to be Rick Owens,” he said. “I don’t even need you to know my name. I just want you to see the thing and hopefully you appreciate it.”
“People might not take me seriously. I’m very insecure about that,” he added. “But it’s also the most important thing, because people not taking me seriously allows me to just fully dive in. Like if they’re not going seriously to respect me, I kind of have nothing to lose.”
