Trump daughter masters multi-tasking
VANCOUVER A morning meet-andgreet with fans at Nordstrom followed by a visit to a $360-million construction project is all in a day’s work for Ivanka Trump.
The businesswoman and allaround fashion mogul did this — and more — during a recent visit, wrapping up her busy day with a red-eye flight back home to New York City, of course.
“I’m not thinking about it in terms of it being too chaotic, I’m thinking of it as being time arbitrage,” Trump said with a laugh over her elaborate itinerary.
And did we mention she’s a mom, too? The 33-year-old, who is married to American businessman and investor Jared Kushner, already has two children Arabella, 4, and Joseph, 2, and she has a third on the way.
“It normally would have been two days,” she admits of the tight schedule. “But this enables me to get back home to the kids.” Not that she’s complaining. “I think that is sort of the fun of my life right now — running development and acquisitions for the Trump Organization and having this amazing opportunity to have created my own brand of incredible, solution-oriented products for our women who work,” she says. “It means that no day is boring and no day is too similar.”
It also means that Trump, daughter of business tycoon and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, gets to wear quite a few different, albeit equally stylish, hats.
Questions regarding her oft-controversial father and his bid for the presidency were forbidden.
But Trump had a lot to say on other topics, though, including one that lies at the very heart of her business and brand ethos — her Women Who Work initiative.
“I launched my apparel and accessories collection, first with footwear, handbags, dresses and many other categories. When I launched our website in celebration of that, I really wanted to focus, rather than it being transactional and just selling to customers, I wanted to make it a digital destination for this next generation of working women,” she says.
“I feel like her story isn’t often told. There aren’t that many pop culture examples of young, millennial working women. There are a few examples of older working women — but not too many. The site is really about telling their story, celebrating them and celebrating the fact that we are multidimensional.”
The Women Who Work profiles — found online at ivankatrump. com/womenwhowork — feature a diverse array of female professionals. There’s the duo behind the wildly popular jewelry line Dannijo — Jodi Snyder Morel and Danielle Snyder — as well as holistic nutritionist and wellness coach Maria Marlowe and several others.
The project was about delivering an updated image to young working women — one that represents them; something Trump found was missing from the fashion market.
“I look at many of my competitors in the advertising space, and their advertising campaigns that are targeted at young working women are caricatures. They are not reflective of how we dress and how we act,” she says.
“One of my favourites is a woman who is a supermodel who is blown up to be the size of the buildings on either side of her, straddling Park Avenue in a black pantsuit holding a briefcase.
“And I’m thinking, this is a 70-year-old or 80-year-old ad executive who thinks this is what women wear to work.”
According to Trump, it’s not even close to what she or other women are wearing.
“I think we very rarely are suited anymore,” she says. “We will wear slacks with a blouse or a blazer that didn’t come with the pants. We are very rarely wearing a head-to-toe uniform like you would have found 10 or 15 years ago.”
Instead, Trump sees women turning to versatile dresses that can take them throughout the day.
“We are wearing the same outfit sitting on the floor playing with our kids over breakfast as we are when we are in a board meeting, as we are on a date with our husband later on that evening,” Trump says.
“Our lives are not compartmentalized anymore into work and home. Now it’s just one life and we are all trying to architect lives that make us happy.”
And for now, Trump is happy to be busy with her family, her brand and with the Trump real estate business.
“There is actually a surprising amount of synergy and similarities between the business I’m building in the fashion world and the work that I’m doing in the real estate space,” she explains. “It’s about execution and attention to detail.”