I have to admit to Trump’s influence
Ihave a terrible habit of scrolling through Instagram late at night when most Zen, sensible people have long turned their phone to aeroplane mode and done their Headspace meditation. Instead, I relax/give myself insomnia by looking idly at pictures of other people’s outfits/flowers/babies. I was stopped in my tracks this week by an image of Ivanka Trump. She was wearing a super-chic dress, which, within a few clicks, I discovered to be a £39.99 Zara number. It’s very rare that I impulse buy, but this was a polka-dotted delight I just knew was a no-brainer.
But how to style this out? In fashion circles, it’s really not ideal to say that one’s purchase was inspired by a Trump; there was a more innocent time when a Make America Great Again cap was seen as coolly ironic, but the mood is now overwhelmingly pro-democrat.
Clearly, now that I’m writing about it here, there is no pretending my polkas came to me via a quick dash into store or even the recommendation of Krissy Turner, one of my esteemed colleagues, who wrote about the dress in question a couple of weeks
before Ivanka wore it (maybe she’s been reading The Daily Telegraph’s fashion pages?).
We live in the age of influence – not that humans haven’t forever been persuaded to acquire certain items or dress a certain way because they see someone else doing so – but the nuances of what or whom you can admit to being influenced by are complex. Anna Wintour, arguably the fashion world’s influencer-in-chief, admitted last week that the Duchess of Sussex has inspired her to wear more trousers. Not that we’ve seen this in action publicly yet, but it came across as a deft nod of respect. Meanwhile, designers reportedly see a boost when Melania Trump wears their pieces, but few want to discuss it and Wintour suggested that she wouldn’t put the Flotus on the cover of Vogue because “it’s very important to have a point of view”. What’s heartening about a polka-dot dress, especially one from Zara, is that Ivanka is hardly telling us anything new by wearing it and prompting others (me) to follow her lead. Because Zara took its lead from the numerous designers who have been using the style and print in their collections recently. And many of them were inspired by those pictures of Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman, which they found on Google/ Pinterest. Ivanka has often worn Zara for her public appearances as presidential adviser/ first daughter, which I think has a lot to do with wanting to seem relatable. Certainly, I wouldn’t have immediately bought the dress if it had been a fourfigure designer look. Her strategy has worked, but let’s be clear – a polka-dot dress is just a polka-dot dress, nothing more.