‘Zulu Queen’ in charge of Barack Obama’s guest list

Desiree Rogers, the first black White House social secretary, is chic, Ivy League – and a former George Bush fundraiser, says Charles Laurence

LAST UPDATED 12:00 AM, DECEMBER 16, 2008

Twenty years ago, Desiree Glapion Rogers was a Zulu Queen. When Barack Obama is inaugurated as president in January, she will become his White House social secretary, keeper of the keys to have-a-chat access to the most powerful man on earth.

Rogers, 49, is the latest of Obama's 'black' appointments, and the chattering classes have duly noted that she will be the first black woman in charge of the East Wing guest lists.

Her rise to such power and influence, however, is not quite as steep or unlikely as it may seem. Rogers is a scion of a black American aristocracy that after generations of waiting discretely in the wings has at last stepped onto the stage.

Zulu Queen? The title turns out to have nothing to do with Old Country roots, but instead reveals her status at the pinnacle of New Orleans society. Her father, Roy Glapion, ran the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club, the city's top black carnival 'crew', and Rogers was the queen of their Mardi Gras balls in 1988 and 2000.

"Desiree Rogers proves that executive and chic can coexist"

Her dad was also director of sports programmes for the New Orleans school system and a city councilman. Her mother ran a nursery school. They were as 'establishment' as a family could be. Desiree rose breezily through school to collect a Harvard MBA business degree, America's top ticket to wealth and power.

She has been noted as much for glamour as business acumen. At 49, she is still conspicuously tall and shapely, and is always well dressed. Her favourite designers are Valentino, Carolina Herrera and Jil Sander: Vogue devoted a fashion 'profile' to her in 2004. "Desiree Rogers," it proclaimed, "proves that executive and chic can coexist."

She has now gone straight to the top of Washington's A-list. "Party people in the know breezed past the senators and the television personalities," the New York Times wrote of a party at an art museum, "to hover around a striking, willowy woman with a shimmering Oscar de la Renta dress and an unfamiliar face." The