Michelle Obama In Oscar de la Renta For Fashion Workshop At White House

First Lady Michelle Obama brought together big-name designers and 150 students this past Wednesday (Oct. 8) in an all-day design extravaganza! According to WWD, the event featured workshops, a panel, networking sessions and a working lunch.

If you follow lots of fashion people on Instagram, then you were able to live vicariously through Obama and her guests, such as fashion designers and executives like Diane Von Furstenberg, Naomi Campbell and Eva Chen, Editor-In-Chief of Lucky Magazine.

"Fashion is about so much more than just a pretty pair of pumps or the perfect hemline. For so many people across the country, it is a calling, it is a career, and it's a way they feed their families," cheered Obama. "So that's why we thought it was important to bring the industry to the White House, and to share it with all of you who are coming up in the next generation."

For Obama, it was important to give students interested in pursuing a career in fashion the opportunity to attend the workshops and rub elbows with some of the biggest names in the business. For the workshop, Obama wore a dress designed by 29-year-old Natalya Koval, an FIT student who recently won a competition overseen by the White House.

According to Fashionista, the designers, publicists, editors and other industry folk were invited to a cocktail party in the East Room to mingle with Obama later that evening. For this event, Obama wore a dress by Oscar de la Renta, a designer whose clothes Obama had never worn before. De la Renta has been an outspoken critic of Obama's fashion choices in the press, censuring her in 2013 "for not wearing an American designer to a state dinner to welcome the Chinese Prime Minister," and in 2009 "for wearing a J. Crew cardigan to meet Queen Elizabeth." Obama chose an embroidered navy dress from De la Renta's fall 2014 collection.