How US first ladies through history have harnessed the power of fashion

Melania Trump

Tailoring, tightly belted trenchcoats and sharply cut tuxedos are often her style of choice. Occasionally military-inspired, always highly polished and glamourous, Melania Trump’s style has been the subject of both adulation and consternation. 

For some, she is the epitome of First Lady style, for others, she embodies something else. She famously wore sky-high heels en route to visit the site of a natural disaster and a pith hat – a symbol of colonial rule – on safari in Kenya. Some point to her extravagant tastes – many of her outfits have price tags running well into the thousands. But perhaps most famously there was a jacket she wore on a visit to a child migrant detention centre in 2018 that read “I really don’t care. Do u?” a message she later said was directed at the “leftwing media”.

Trump’s wardrobe is picked over perhaps all the more given it is often the only communication tool she uses. “Melania is not known as a great speaker, which made her fashion choices even more important, because many times, that was her form of speech,” says Rabinovitch-Fox. And “as a former model, she is of course not a stranger to fashion, and she knows very well how to use clothes.”

“In general, I think that today, first ladies understand the power of fashion, and are trying to build an image for them that represents the country, but also theirs, and their husbands’ agenda,” says Rabinovitch-Fox. It remains to be seen how this dynamic may shift when the US inaugurates its “first gentleman”.

The Look by Michelle Obama is published by Crown Publishing Group in the US and Viking Press in the UK.

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