Samantha Cameron, Carla Bruni and Michelle Obama have all been voted onto the style elite of Vanity Fair’s 2010 International Best Dressed List.

The eight-month pregnant UK prime minister’s wife joins regulars Bruni and Obama along with other notable UK style icons David Beckham and Lady Gaga. According to Vanity Fair, Mrs Cameron is the ‘UK First Lady’, and wears the ‘realpolitik’ look. The magazine also lists Mrs Cameron as employed by upmarket stationers Smythson as a creative director.

In a comprehensive detail of the PM’s wife, Vanity Fair says Mrs Cameron, 39, is often seen in numbers from Erdem and Phillip Lam, accompanied by bib necklaces, brooches and chain pendants. When it comes to dressing down, Mrs Cameron can be seen sporting a pair of sneakers and more often than not, a pram. Tickets for Troops, the returned services organisation set up by the Tories last year, is listed as her favourite cause. Mrs Cameron is known to have close ties in the fashion industry, with her sister being deputy editor at British Vogue.

Aside from her fabled dolphin ankle-tattoo, Mrs Cameron is best known for sporting a £65 grey polka dot dress from high street retailers Marks and Spencer to augment the austerity theme of last year’s Conservative Party conference.

The Vanity Fair list, which has been one of the key indexes for fashion heavyweights for the past 71 years, also featured Princess Mary of Denmark, Helena Bonham Carter, John Galliano, Martin Scorcese, Alec Baldwin and Javier Badem.

Michelle Obama is once again causing a stir in the fashion world, but this time not for her toned arms. A row has erupted over how to classify the colour of a floor-length gown worn by the first lady in a meeting with the Indian prime minister last November.

The description of the dress by its designer Naeem Khan: “a sterling-silver sequin, abstract floral, nude staples gown,” was reinterpreted by the Associated Press as “flesh-coloured,” sending PC pulses racing in the media world. Questions were subsequently asked about whose flesh the dress mirrored, as with its peachy pink hue, it clearly wasn’t Mrs Obama’s.

Since the controversy, AP has revised its description of the frock, classifying it more diplomatically as “champagne” – cue great debate in the fashion world about the use of the word “nude”. And with ‘nude’ shades being a hot trend on spring/summer catwalks this year, it’s bound to cause quite a kerfuffle.

Traditionally, ‘nude’ refers to anything from off-white to gold, but it doesn’t get much more controversial in terms of this debate than InStyle Magazine announcing that “nude is the new black”. But with Michelle looking as stunning as ever in her much debated dress, perhaps it’s time that the dispute was put to bed, and the fashion world realised that black and nude really can go hand-in-hand.