Fox reporter’s little square adds a little flair to his attire

Fox reporter’s little square adds a little flair to his attire

Ed Henry doesn’t have a lot of room to make a style statement. The chief White House correspondent for Fox News Channel pretty much has to stay in the box that is your TV screen.

But in the buttoned-up world of TV news, he has figured out a way: pocket squares — blue ones, red ones, white ones.He’ll wear red-meets-blue purple, too, but don’t read too much into any political meaning, he says.

It all started as a friendly fashion competition with Ali Velshi, a former colleague when Henry was at CNN. It was all about the bigger, better necktie. There was an unending game of one-upmanship with more colorful shirts, perhaps even a patterned vest.

Still, Henry says, Velshi usually outdid him — until Henry pulled out the pocket square.

“The pocket square amps it up,” says Henry, adding: “At least no one is teasing me about my makeup anymore.”

A bit of ribbing does go on about his fashion sense. A producer set up a Twitter account for Ed’s Pocket Square. Sample tweet: “I hate when the TV graphics cover me and I don’t get enough airtime!”< /p>

Henry agreed to meet at the Brooks Brothers flagship store on Madison Avenue. The way he stood there at one of the glass countertops, opening his travel-friendly pocket-square case and putting the accessories on display, it looked as if, if things didn’t work out at Fox, he could have a position at the store. Customers passed by and looked: One couldn’t tell whether they wanted to ask for his autograph or whether they thought the squares were for sale.

“I like pizazz. I like to show my personality — any way I can,” Henry says with a smile.

Most of his workday is serious business, and he doesn’t want to detract from that. He travels the world with the president, reporting on stories and issues that affect the world.

But that doesn’t mean he’s a two-dimensional stuffed shirt: The 40-year-old has a wife, kids and, yes, an appreciation for fashion.

When he was following President Barack Obama to Martha’s Vineyard, Mass., two years ago, he stopped in a store in Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport and picked up a pocket square with a paisley print in ocean colors. He was covering the president’s vacation, after all, and he wanted to look the part.

“I never did the khaki-and-cotton thing,” he says. “I like how they dressed in Mad Men, and I think that dressing up is something that’s coming out of the recession. People want to look successful.”

There’s also the respect that Henry offers to his job and the people he covers by putting on a suit and tie — and a pocket square.

He has been Fox’s top White House reporter since 2011.

Henry and Obama have at times had a prickly relationship, but they can agree on style.The reporter recalls interviewing the president in Moscow in 2009 and Obama taking an extra moment to compliment Henry’s cuff links and tie.

“The president has a real eye for detail,” Henry says. “He’s a great dresser.”

Henry picks up ties and pocket squares as souvenirs during his globe-trotting expeditions; they act as a bit of a travelogue, he says.His favorite is a tie he bought in Italy, where he was with President George W. Bush.

He rarely shops for ties and pocket squares together, and it’s his rule that they never fully match.“I try to pull out the color of one and pick it up in the other,” he says. “Wearing two solids is cheating.”

He plans to buy a special pocket square for the 2013 presidential inauguration — no matter who wins the election in the fall.“I made a trip for a new tie for the ’09 inaugural,” he says, “but the next inauguration will be my first ‘pocket-square inauguration.’  ”