Lisa Armstrong Melania Trump’s stylish first year as First Lady
It’s a full year since Melania Trump became the USA’S least likely First Lady, and if we’ve learned anything in a tumultuous 12 months of statement sleeves, stilettos, pencil skirts and $51,500 coats, it’s this: when it comes to the fashion police, context is all.
Like all previous First Ladies, Melania has been at the receiving end of assumptions not necessarily based on any deep knowledge of her character. True, there’s a back catalogue of dubious-taste portraits in her past, including the infamous GQ portfolio in which the third Mrs Trump, posing aboard the Trump jet in skimpy lingerie, directed more affection towards her props – a pistol and diamond necklaces – than she has subsequently shown her husband.
But more than most Flotuses, she’s an enigma, her face a blank, her eyes increasingly small and un-readable.
Even more than for recent First Ladies, what she wears matters. She had no obviously highpowered career – apart from that modelling stint, and her entrepreneurial gig as a QVC jewellery designer. She says little in public, political or otherwise, and has variously been described as “effectively a single mother” (a devoted one at that, according to her press office). Cause wise, there is the much satirised anti-cyberbullying, which isn’t even having an effect on her spouse. So to a large degree it has become all about the clothes.
When she gets it right, which looked at dispassionately, she not infrequently does, albeit in VERY BRIGHT COLOURS, she is widely portrayed as getting it wrong. Unfortunately for her, it’s almost impossible to be dispassionate about the Trumps. When she’s textbook elegant, she’s seen as too textbook. Her immaculate grooming is that of a trussed-up, buttoneddown, surrendered Republican wife. Her particular brand of glamour is viewed as irredeemably vulgar. Her own personal defeat is that while she clearly looks up to Jackie Kennedy (that blue Ralph Lauren suit she wore when her husband was sworn in was an unashamed tribute to Jackie’s, her ballet-themed Christmas decorations at the White House echoed Jackie’s 1961 Nutcracker Christmas) she will never achieve her idol’s waspy sophistication.
She may, however, draw meagre consolation from the knowledge that Jackie, too, was heavily criticised in her day for her extravagance. Posterity forgave Jackie, because of her husband’s popularity and because she achieved what few Americans had before or since – she made the presidential office seem glamorous and she seduced the French.
Melania didn’t exactly charm the French on a trip there, but nor did she repel them the way she repels swathes of her adopted country. Perhaps it’s easier to be less angry, more wryly amused when it’s not your own first lady being called into question. It seems unlikely that Melania will bolster White House mythology with anything akin to a Camelot legacy. On the surface, she’s less Jackie, more Marie-antoinette, with whom she shares several ominous traits, including an adoration of large diamonds and a certain tone deafness when it comes to circumstantial sensitivities, as in the notorious case of The Ridiculed Stilettos, when Melania boarded Air Force One in startlingly high, pointy court shoes en route to give succour to the flood victims in Texas last summer.
Like Marie Antoinette, Melania Trump stands accused of favouring foreign nations over her adopted one, refusing to put America First in her closet. In fact, America frequently comes a distant second, third and fourth behind Italy (those Dolce & Gabbana chivalrous Instagram posts thanking the First Lady for wearing their clothes, in contrast to the deafening silence that accompanies some of her homegrown choices have not gone unrewarded), France (she loves Dior), Britain (Roksanda and Erdem have both been sighted several times) and Spain (Delpozo). Michelle Obama wore all those labels too, especially when she was travelling to their respective countries. But her husband didn’t make a point of putting protectionist trade rhetoric at the heart of his campaigning, so her championing of international designers was seen, like the Duchess of Cambridge’s, as examples of brilliant silent diplomacy.
Whether it was wise of Mrs Trump to wear a Dolce & Gabbana coat that cost $51,500 to meet the Pope, even if it was one made in Italy, is another moot point. It is a sum so breathtakingly huge that in other circumstances (ie a different husband) the fashion world would have toasted her refusal to bow to the spin doctors’ demands that she be “relatable”. But most of the fashion world was unequivocal about where it stood even before the inauguration on Jan 20 last year. “Not necessarily my image,” was how Tom Ford responded to a question about whether he would be happy to dress the new First Lady. And no he wouldn’t. He’d already been approached by her, he said.
Marc Jacobs delivered a similarly emphatic snub. Perhaps the most stinging rebuke was Sophie Theallet’s tweet: “As one who celebrates and strives for diversity, individual freedom, and respect for all lifestyles, I will not participate in dressing or associate myself in any way with the next First Lady.” Some high-minded fashion websites said they would not be chronicling the First Lady’s outfits as they had previous Flotuses.
It was left to Hervé Pierre, a French-born designer, to come to the aid of the fashion marooned First Lady. Having previously worked at Oscar de la Renta and Carolina Herrera, Pierre knows all about the grand-entry gown and was only too happy to design her inauguration outfit. He now acts as her de facto stylist, shopping in department stores on her behalf, since hardly any big names will collaborate with her as they have previous first ladies. She must therefore buy “off-the-rack”.
No wonder, then, if she chooses to thumb her nose at her critics by spending unseemly amounts of money on the kind of outfits that used only to be worn by fictional first ladies in implausible soap operas. It’s not as if her clothing allowance is underwritten by the taxpayer. For Melaniahaters, the inconvenient truth is that many first ladies have worn fabulously extravagant gowns, including Mrs Obama and Mrs Clinton. It’s just that theirs were often gifted (a first lady may accept valuable presents on the understanding that she donates them to the nation), bespoke and therefore difficult to price accurately.
Perhaps all is not lost for Melania. Last December, a Gallup poll revealed that her popularity ratings, in contrast to those of her husband’s, had risen over the preceding months, from 37per cent to 54 per cent. His had increased by one per cent, although all things given, even that seems surprising. There are signs too, that there is a “Melania effect” when she wears certain items, particularly now that she’s taking a leaf out of Mrs Obama’s style guide and occasionally dipping into Jcrew. There’s still a chunk of America willing to give Trump the benefit of the doubt and in awe of Melania’s brand of beauty. Her ultimate shield, ironically, could be her husband’s pussy grabbing uncouthness, which not only made the world feel sorry for her, but helped foster a backlash against the objectification of women’s appearances.
So a year in, perhaps the worst that can be said of the way Melania has dressed for the job is that she doesn’t look like a woman enjoying herself, despite THOSE BRIGHT COLOURS. But since when was fun a prerequisite for the First Lady?