The hidden messages in Melania Trump’s meticulous outfits – and her new plan to mastermind a family legacy

For all the extraordinary drama that surrounds her, whether in or out of the White House, no aspect of Melania Trump has attracted more comment and attention than her eye-wateringly expensive wardrobe.

She has literally dressed to impress, something even her critics can’t help but acknowledge.

Armed with a limitless budget and a team of specialist advisors including couturier Hervé Pierre (who designed her Inaugural gown) Melania has, at least in this regard, performed to perfection.

However, for those tempted to claim the world’s most famous wife – and potential future First Lady once again – is nothing but a clothes horse, I have to tell them they are wrong.

Melania is a woman of formidable organizing power, whose long-term ambitions for herself and her husband might surprise even ardent Republican fans.

Armed with a limitless budget and a team of specialist advisors including couturier Hervé Pierre (who designed her Inaugural gown, pictured) Melania has performed to perfection.

Chosen for her first day in office in January 2017, Melania’s Ralph Lauren outfit – a tailored powder blue cashmere suit – drew noticeable comparisons with Jackie Kennedy’s iconic 1961 inaugural ensemble.

Expertly tailored and shockingly expensive, Melania wore this modern interpretation of Dior’s famous ‘New Look’ for her brief appearance at the Republican National Convention – an apt choice for a woman who values the historical nature of her role as consort.

Like Jacqueline Kennedy, the First Lady whose approach to dressing she most often channels, Melania inhabits full-on the theatricality of her role. And that is the point.

Melania’s wardrobe has been an exercise in disciplined planning, one which acknowledges that politics is not just the art of the possible, but an art of the performance, too.

Perhaps as an outsider – only the second foreign-born First Lady – she understands the artifice required of her position more clearly than some predecessors.

Despite the odd sneaker moment and that notorious ‘I Really Don’t Care. Do U?’ Zara jacket, worn to visit a detention center for migrant children in 2018, Melania has made few mistakes. 

And while her heroine, Jackie, was forced to abandon the couture houses of Paris in favor of patriotic American copies (mostly by Oleg Cassini) when she reached the White House, Melania has been unrestrained.

What better piece to project a regal message than the red Dior suit worn for a brief salute to her husband on the stage of the Republican National Convention this July?

Expertly tailored and shockingly expensive – current versions retail somewhere around $10,000 – this modern interpretation of Dior’s famous ‘New Look’ was an apt choice for a woman who not only showcases a beautiful silhouette but values the historical nature of her role as consort.

Her sure touch was in evidence once again last weekend, at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally, where Melania appeared in a form-fitting animal print trench coat by Michael Kors, carefully chosen to stand out amid the sea of blue and red projected onto the vast crowd in the auditorium.

Melania’s sure touch was in evidence once again last Sunday at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally, where Melania appeared in a form-fitting animal print trench coat by Michael Kors.

Her choice of a Zara jacket bearing the legend ‘I really don’t care. Do you?’ for a 2018 visit to a child migrant centre was judged one of her few missteps.

Perhaps adopting the late Queen Elizabeth II’s motto, ‘I have to be seen to be believed’, Melania had imagined the moment and dressed accordingly.

But it is the planned eventual fate of these outfits that truly sheds light on Melania’s wider ambitions. You see, rather than discarding the pieces, or giving them away to grateful friends once worn, most have been meticulously wrapped in conservation tissue and placed in archival boxes.

This not merely because Melania  is careful with her clothes – which she is – but because I know she intends to preserve and display each handstitched outfit for posterity.

Whatever form the Trump Library eventually takes, perhaps at their Mar-a-Lago home in Florida, her outfits will play a leading role, as will Melania herself.

There’s a clue in her new memoir when the former First Lady describes the blue, unmistakably Jackie-inspired, Ralph Lauren outfit she chose – with help of dresser and designer, Hervé Pierre – for January 20, 2017, her first day in office.

‘I knew that all eyes would be upon me as I stepped out on this historic day,’ she writes. ‘This dress was going to be captured in photos that would be recorded in history.’

Like Jackie Kennedy, she knows the power of an image – and the way that clothes can matter on the stage of presidential politics. If her husband, Donald, prefers to live in the moment, Melania sees the bigger picture. She is the legacy builder.

There was an intriguing illustration of this during their last – tumultuous – days in office in January 2021, as pro-Trump rioters invaded the Capitol Building. 

Melania famously spent those hours on January 6 positioning floral arrangements and adjusting camera positions for a photographic record of her last day in Washington.

And though some sneered at her claims to have been fulfilling the First Lady’s ceremonial duties, Melania was completely in earnest – wrapped up in a project acknowledging the Trumps’ imminent departure from the seat of American power.

While her husband’s team resisted attempts at transition, the First Lady’s aides lavished care and attention upon the business of packing up their presidential lives.

By the first week of January 2021, the Treaty Room at the White House was no longer a functioning reception room but ground zero for their move to Palm Beach and the Mar-a-Lago mansion. 

Housekeeper workrooms were a hive of activity as Melania ensured that the gowns she had worn for official and state occasions were packed away. Each had been carefully and painstakingly planned, tailored and preserved. 

Melania had even prepared a suitable outfit in case she’d been required to attend the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II (who, in the event, would live for another two years).

In many ways, Melania saw herself as the leading international consort on the world stage and believed the historic value of her clothing was an essential element in her legacy, as was her work restoring the White House to its former glory.

Busting the ‘Free Melania’ claims that she was some sort of surrendered wife, the First Lady could, as she quit 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, feel confident that she had executed one of the most ambitious plans of preservation of any of her recent predecessors.

Melania is concerned about the Trumps’ legacy – and poured time an energy into White House renovation projects. (Pictured: The refreshed wall fabric in the ‘Red Room’).

Resisting the temptation to lavish time and energy revamping ephemeral interiors, Melania undertook a series of long-term conservation projects.

Horrified, for example, by the scratched mahogany doors throughout the official Residence, Melania had each of them removed and completely refinished. The ‘Red Room’, too, had suffered over time, fading almost to pink after years of sun on its red Scalamandré silk walls 

The dullness of the marble-laden state floors was another unpleasant surprise and prompted a summertime conservation project.

The run-down interior of the Presidential Elevator – linking the state and private apartments – was next on her list.

And, shocked to learn that the Zuber wallpaper, first installed by Jacqueline Kennedy in the Family Dining Room, lay decaying beneath decades of replacement paper overlying it, Melania initiated a lengthy restoration.

She even decided that the famed Rose Garden, the cornerstone of ‘Camelot’ as the Kennedy tenure became known, should be redesigned.

Some castigated her, suggesting she had defamed the historic space. Too few acknowledged that it had been essential to replace the outmoded irrigation system as it necessitated the yearly and costly (not to mention ecologically unsound) replacement of nearly all the garden’s plants.

But perhaps her most significant intervention was the 1,200-square foot classically designed tennis pavilion, which had the distinction of being the first permanent structure added to the White House grounds for more than a hundred years.

Melania toasted the opening with champagne on the night her husband’s rival was declared the victor in the 2020 presidential election. As she celebrated her achievement, her husband posed uncomfortably with the project’s major donors.

Last week, billionaire businessman Mark Cuban rudely suggested that former president Trump has a problem with ‘strong, intelligent women’ – that he doesn’t like to be around them because he finds them challenging.

Melania might beg to differ – but don’t expect her to say so. She’ll leave it to the Rose Garden, the Trump Library and that extraordinary wardrobe to do the talking.

That, as you might say, is more her style.

When Melania Wowed At The White House

by Rebekah Absalom

Pristine Performance 

For an official state visit in France in April 2018, Melania sported a pristine white skirt suit from Michael Kors Collection. The standout piece, however, was her wide-brimmed hat, designed by Hervé Pierre.

London Catwalk

Melania turned London’s Downing Street into a runway in December 2019 with this canary yellow Valentino cape-coat. Beneath the vibrant outer layer, she wore a magenta Hervé Pierre dress, coordinated with Christian Louboutin stilettos.

Seasonal Chic

At the annual Thanksgiving Turkey Pardon in 2017, Melania chose a seasonally rich palette with a burnt-orange turtleneck and sleek brown leather pencil skirt, topped with a show-stopping floral coat by Stella McCartney.

New Look For Paris 

In July 2017, Melania arrived for an Official Visit to France in a scarlet Dior jacket and skirt. The suit is styled in a nod to the French fashion house’s iconic 1947 ‘New Look’. Melania re-wore the outfit at the RNC this summer.