A farewell to the Trump aesthetic

President’s focus on appearances embodies egotistical legacy

Few presidents have exploited the theatrical grandeur of the job quite as enthusiastically or as cynically as Donald Trump, from his proliferating forests of flags to his gilding of the Oval Office. Few have been as strategic about the power of caricature or had such a complicit wife and court to bolster the spectacle. As a group, they tapped into the dregs of Dynasty and The Bonfire of the Vanities past that sits nestled in our lizard brains. For four years, we parsed soap opera chic instead of The West Wing.

The visuals demanded attention, just like the tweets.

But while we will not have that final photo-op closure as the outgoing first family welcomes the new residents to the White House — that norm, like so many others, has been trampled — the Trumps leave behind a legacy of image-making and manipulation that will be as much a reference for political pundits and style strategists as that of the Reagans, the Kennedys and the Obamas.

The political costume department of our collective imagination will never be the same.

There was a reason the president complained, publicly, about Vogue never giving his wife Melania a cover (at least not after he entered politics). A reason he complained, too, about designers vociferously announcing early in his term that they would not dress the first lady. A reason he and his family built chunks of their empire on the wardrobe of ersatz aspiration. They understood the mythmaking power of appearance and how it sends tendrils of connection to us all.

There was no better example than Trump himself. He didn’t just sell his own merch; he wore it. Except, that is, for the oversize suits, which matched the overlong ties (if they were Scotch-taped together, who cared; they looked good from the outside) and became symbols of the overwhelming ego.

Adding to the effect was Melania Trump, his ornamental equal. The cast of characters in the Trump family were embodiments of the president’s ideas of outmoded gender norms and what it meant to “dress like a woman” — and as a man for that matter — in Chiara Boni wrap dresses and pumps, false eyelashes, artfully cultivated stubble like an advertisement for masculinity from the school of Axe body spray.

Donald Trump is vacating office with the look, if not his reputation, intact, although increasingly it has taken on a whole new cast. What was once seen, on screens and in many the mind’s eye, as the brazen self-branding and narcissism of a reality TV star looks more like simple mendacity. From the beginning, Trump’s appearance was a sham. We should have known that such artifice was as much a part of his moral makeup as his cosmetic kit, and there was more to come. It was always part of the picture.