That was fast.
Two weeks after her “America First” fashion statement at the inauguration, Melania Trump emerged last weekend from the relative seclusion of her life in New York to join her husband at Mar-a-Lago, aka the winter White House/exclusive golf club in Florida. And as far as her sartorial language went, America was — well, pretty much last.
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On Friday, greeting the president as he disembarked from Air Force One in Palm Beach, the first lady wore a short red Givenchy cape dress. On Saturday, at a Red Cross ball, she wore a long hot-pink gown from Christian Dior (both brands connected, by the way, to LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton, the French luxury conglomerate led by Bernard Arnault, the only foreign luxury mogul to have made a postelection pilgrimage to Trump Tower). But on Sunday, for a Super Bowl party at Trump International Golf Club, she wore leather pants from The Row, the brand of Mary-Kate Olsen and Ashley Olsen, and a thin knit sweater by Derek Lam, both names at New York Fashion Week.
Does it matter?
On one hand, Melania Trump has been explicit about her desire to eschew, at least for the moment, the Washington spotlight. Perhaps her clothes are a part of that, and thus the point was simply to look elegant and not to bother with more complicated billboarding. If so, she achieved that aim.
However, Melania Trump has also said that she intends to meaningfully inhabit the role of first lady, and certainly this appearance was part of that goal. The choice of the red dress — which made for a compelling visual next to President Donald Trump’s red tie as the two walked together along the tarmac — was consciously symbolic, according to Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, Melania Trump’s senior adviser, who said it was in honor of “National Wear Red Day, which is to highlight the importance and raise awareness about heart disease.”
So it’s not like they haven’t been thinking this through. Or that they aren’t aware of the symbolic value of dress, especially when it comes to a first lady who prefers to let her clothes do the talking.
If so, there is a contradiction implicit in her choices of clothing, given her husband’s promise in his Inaugural Address that “Buy American” would be a tenet of his administration. But the Made-in-America dress requirement for first ladies, historically held dear, was largely taken off the table during the Obama administration and transformed into a vehicle for cross-border outreach. It was Donald Trump who made it an issue again, and in a forum arguably more public, and permanent, than Twitter.
When asked about the issue, Winston Wolkoff emailed the following statement:
“Mrs. Trump is a proud and longtime supporter of American fashion. She appreciates fashion as art. As a former model, she has always been a patron of the world’s most distinguished designers both here and abroad. Mrs. Trump buys from an international mix of brands because that is what reflects her uniquely American life experience and style. She is more excited than ever to make a platform for American designers as she did on one of the most important weeks in history, the Inauguration, showcasing the extraordinary talents of American designers.”
In other words: Buying European is a reflection of the American shopping experience.
For anyone who has walked down any main shopping street in a big U.S. city — such as Fifth Avenue in New York, where Melania Trump lives — it’s hard to argue with that. Though it also seems like something of a contorted rationale, and one that could be exploited by companies seeking to relocate some factories overseas. That choice is, after all, also a part of the U.S. industrial story.
In any case, it’s worth noting that Givenchy and Dior have been playing possum since the weekend, another indication of fashion’s still-ambiguous relationship with Melania Trump. Neither fashion house issued the de rigueur news release trumpeting the first lady’s appearance in one of their dresses. Asked whether the brand had worked with the first lady on the red dress, a spokesman for Givenchy said that the company had no comment and that the dress had been purchased from a store, without any interpersonal discussion. (It is for sale on the Neiman Marcus website, among others, for $2,095.) Dior simply did not respond.
As for Lam, who in November told the fashion magazine WWD, “I really don’t see myself getting involved with the Trump presidency,” the situation pretty much shows the problem with that stance. After all, the first lady is free to buy his product, whether he wants to get involved or not. Which is another American story, of sorts.
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