Michelle Obama Looks Gorgeous in Blue Azede Jean-Pierre Dress on Essence Magazine Cover

Fifth time's the charm for the first lady

By Cinya Burton Jun 30, 2014 7:10 PMTags
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Michelle Obama is back on the cover of Essence magazine and her fifth time may be her best one yet. The beaming first lady dons a custom sky blue Azede Jean-Pierre frock adorned with an oversize crystal broach. The image is, in a word, stunning!

While this is the first time FLOTUS has worn AJP, it is a classic Obama move to support budding American designers. Azede made her New York Fashion Week debut in September of last year and has since been popping up on the red carpet thanks to celebrity fans such as Solange Knowles and Angie Harmon. You may recall the bug-print ensemble Solange wore last January? Yup, that was an Azede creation.

But back to FLOTUS, who got quite candid in her interview in the August 2014 issue when chatting about her daughters, Sasha and Malia:

"The people we admire in our society today are athletes, singers, reality stars. You don't see teachers an doctors and lawyers revered in the same way. So, naturally, kids gravitate to what they think is cool. But one of the things I've tried to tell my girls, and try to tell all the children I talk to, is that there is nothing cooler than having a good education," she says, adding: "We talk about responsibility and accountability, about making sure they're not wasting the opportunities they're given. We make sure they know how lucky they are and that, because of that, they have an obligation to have their acts together and take their education very seriously."

Indeed, Malia will soon be doing just that when she selects a college in the very near future, but she hasn't been goofing off in the meantime. The 15-year-old already nabbed a job as a production assistant on the set of Halle Berry's new CBS series Extant. Nice work, Malia—literally!