Mr. Bart first became aware of Ms. Emhoff’s style at a fund-raiser for Ms. Harris during the presidential primaries. “I noticed her as soon as she walked in the door,” he said. During the summer of 2020, he and Ms. Emhoff began talking about the possibility of her joining IMG. They had a Zoom call, and she showed him her loom and some of her knitwear pieces.
On her Instagram account, Ms. Emhoff often posts her knitting projects, like brightly colored striped pants, though she notes that she is currently closed to commissions. She also shows support for the slow fashion movement and the queer community. Her past modeling appearances included a shoot for Buffalo Zine, an indie fashion magazine.
Since Ms. Harris’s nomination in August, her modern, blended family has drawn much attention and praise. Ms. Emhoff has described her stepmother, father and mother (Kerstin Emhoff, a production company founder) as “a unit, like a three-person parenting squad.”
This summer, in a video recorded for the Democratic National Convention, Ms. Emhoff referred to the vice president by her nickname, “Momala, the world’s greatest stepmom.” (When it comes to the second gentleman, she and her brother, Cole, 26, call him by his first name, Doug, almost exclusively. Before the inauguration, Ms. Emhoff told The New York Times she hoped he would take up knitting, “like I do.”)
The inauguration ceremony brought a new level of public attention to Ms. Emhoff. It wasn’t just her outfit — styled by Jill Lincoln and Jordan Johnson, who dressed Ms. Emhoff in a burgundy Batsheva frock beneath the Miu Miu coat — or the Thom Browne coat, skirt and tie, with its hints of red, white and blue, that she wore to the Covid-19 memorial service the night before, but the way she possibly wiggled her eyebrows at Mike Pence on the Capitol steps.