[Magdalen] The Elephant in the List.

[Eleanor Braun]

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