[Magdalen] The Elephant in the List.

Grace Cangialosi gracecan at gmail.com
Thu Feb 1 01:15:33 UTC 2018


I don’t suppose she could have worn it just because it was attractive, and she liked it?  (Though I do like the comment that it was like an outfit that Hillary wore!)

> On Jan 31, 2018, at 12:25 PM, Eleanor Braun <eleanor.braun at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> So here's what the NY Times fashion critic said:
> 
> It took the State of the Union to get her in a state of quasi-support. On
> Tuesday night Melania Trump finally appeared in public alongside her
> husband (or at least in the same very large room, though they apparently
> arrived separately) for the first time since the public allegations that
> President Trump had conducted, just weeks after Mrs. Trump had given birth
> to the couple’s son, an affair with the porn star Stormy Daniels
> <https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/12/us/trump-stephanie-clifford-stormy-daniels.html>
> .
> 
> That Mrs. Trump did so in a white pantsuit with a glowing white blouse —
> exactly the kind of outfit that became a symbol of her husband’s rival, Hillary
> Clinton
> <https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/30/fashion/hillary-clinton-democratic-national-convention.html>,
> during the last election, and has since become widely accepted as sartorial
> shorthand for both the suffragists and contemporary women’s empowerment and
> something of an anti-Trump uniform, and also what the women gathered behind
> Kesha wore to display their sisterhood at Sunday’s Grammy Awards — seemed
> to be about as subtle a slap in the face as could be contained in a garment.
> 
> She was playing her part, applauding and smiling with the special invited
> guests whose stories were mentioned in the president’s speech, but she
> wasn’t doing it entirely as scripted.
> 
> Of course, it’s possible Mrs. Trump chose the suit, an ivory Christian Dior
> style with cropped trousers and curvaceous jacket, to stand out against the
> sea of black worn by the Democratic Women’s Working Group and its
> supporters, following the donning of black at the Golden Globes
> <https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/08/fashion/the-golden-globes-black-carpet-fashion-review.html>
> in honor of Time’s Up and #MeToo. (Though many of those same women wore
> white to her husband’s first address to a joint session of Congress last
> year.)
> 
> It’s possible Mrs. Trump did it to show solidarity with the female members
> of the G.O.P., who had been urged to wear patriotic red, white and blue
> <http://thehill.com/homenews/house/371444-female-gop-house-members-to-wear-red-white-and-blue-to-state-of-the-union>,
> as were the members of the Cabinet. Many of the men sported ties that
> matched the blue ones worn by the president and Speaker Paul D. Ryan, and
> the red one on Vice President Mike Pence.
> Symbols matter.  If only we knew what it meant.
> 
> Eleanor


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