If her husband’s administration has seemed in the last few days like a wrecking ball smashing through norms and institutions both domestic and international, Melania’s reemergence in the theatre of DC political life has been a study in contrasts.
She may be her husband’s most steadfast supporter – but she travels alongside him on a parallel if not always intertwined path.
Restraint, discipline and strategy – have been the visual cues the First Lady has, largely through her deployment of dress, adopted for her husband’s second Presidency.
And the immaculately tailored, austere grey suit she chose for Tuesday night’s joint session of Congress was no exception.
Acutely aware that she cannot step outside her front door without being decoded and deconstructed by critics, it is no wonder that for the political equivalent of the Oscars – with all the major players gathered in one room – she returned to Dior, the brand that is at the core of Melania’s interpretation of present responsibilities, and a reflection of a newfound assurance that quite frequently floundered during her husband’s first administration.
Amid the sea of garish pink suits that appeared on many Democratic congresswomen (apparently a feminist protest against Trump), Melania stood out in an ensemble that no doubt caught the attention of her eagle-eyed stylist Herve Pierre when it recently graced the front windows of Dior’s flagship store on Manhattan’s 5th Avenue.
Melania’s grey wool tweed jacket, cinched at the waist with its removable scarf and perfectly paired skirt – all designed by Dior’s creative head Maria Grazia Chiuri – ensured that whatever the chaos of Tuesday evening, one person remained in line and on message.
In 2017, Melania showed up in a black sequin Michael Kors skirt suit that seemed more Upper East Side cocktail party than political consort.
Poised and confident – Melania maintained her position center stage by resolutely staying above both the stylistic and political fray.
Boardroom worthy, androgynous in effect, the look was still infused with the kind of feminine undertones that stretch back to the creativity of Christian Dior himself in the late 1940s.
The grey wool tweed jacket, cinched at the waist with its removable scarf and perfectly paired skirt – all designed by Dior’s current creative head Maria Grazia Chiuri – ensured that whatever the chaos of the evening, one person remained in line and on message.
A reinvented twist yet again on the iconic Dior bar suit, this was Melania revisiting and extending a style trajectory that seems to be her new standard as First Lady 2.0 – a far cry from the ingenue she presented to the world eight years ago.
Indeed, think back to 2017. Though not quite amateur hour, the First Lady who graced the congressional halls for the first time (and who had notably not yet moved permanently into the White House), showed up in a black sequin Michael Kors skirt suit that seemed more Upper East Side cocktail party than political consort.
Back then, Melania was still working out the balance of her varying careers – model, mother, mogul’s wife.
Garnering as much attention for its price tag ($9,590 – almost the same amount as Tuesday night’s ensemble) as its color – which seemed a direct rebuke to the suffragette white of the female Democratic legislators in attendance then – Melania faced the added insult of Michael Kors’s rather public disavowal that he had had anything to do with dressing her for the event.
Inching toward the Melania we see thriving now was the severe Dolce & Gabbana skirt suit she wore to her husband’s State of the Union address in 2020. She chose to rewear that look in January this year to the Lying-In-State of Jimmy Carter – the first time she had returned to Capitol Hill since the end of Trump’s first term.
In her second turn as First Lady, Melania has doubled down on razor-sharp tailoring, notably with the Dolce & Gabbana tux she wore last month
For her official portrait this year, Melania chose another black Dolce & Gabbana tuxedo jacket with a Ralph Lauren cummerbund and trousers
On Monday, she continued the menswear theme in a brown Ralph Lauren three-piece trouser suit for the Take It Down act
Since then, she has doubled down on razor-sharp tailoring.
The Dolce & Gabbana tuxedo black blazer with satin lapels that she wore to host the National Governors Association dinner in February was a glammed-up version of the business look she wore for her official portrait, captured in January.
And on Monday, she continued the menswear theme in a brown Ralph Lauren three-piece trouser suit when she appeared on Capitol Hill to lobby for ‘Take It Down Act’, aimed at protecting Americans from deepfake and revenge pornography.
That was no an accident. Unlike the majority of women, Melania’s stylistic choices are almost never a measure of a momentary mood. She does not wake up on any given morning and decide what to wear.
With an unflagging sense of the visual vacuum the role of First Lady requires her to fill, she will have approached her albeit non-speaking part in Tuesday night’s spectacle with the kind of precision that must be the envy of West Wing staffers.
Amid the flurry of chaos that has enveloped the presidential ecosystem in recent days – upstairs, cocooned within the privacy of the White House Residence, Melania would have been clear-headed and concise as she decided how best to navigate her most high-profile DC appearance since her husband’s second inauguration.
Critics, fashion and otherwise, spent most of her husband’s first term trying to pinpoint – mostly through her clothes – where Melania’s own loyalties might lie.
Yet amid escalating arguments about tariffs and foreign wars, Melania has ensured that, in this second turn as First Lady, her views will remain a mystery.
Pivoting from Ralph Lauren, an icon of the American fashion industry, to a fashion house that’s part of one of France biggest companies, LVMH (a conglomerate that is decidedly concerned about the impact future tariffs might have on its profit margins), Melania was as inscrutable as ever.