Melania Trump stood next to her husband at the Capitol Rotunda in Washington DC on Monday wearing a custom navy coat, skirt and blouse by New York designer Adam Lippes. Unlike the powder blue, cashmere Ralph Lauren ensemble she donned at the 2017 Presidential Inauguration, which prompted comparisons to Jacqueline Kennedy, this time the incoming First Lady opted for a much more sombre look, her flat, wide-brim hat disguising most of her face. The look, in fact, was Melania Trump through and through—severe and demure.
In opting for a look by a lesser-known designer, though one she’s turned to in the past (most recently in NYC last summer), Trump could be gesturing at how she intends to employ fashion differently during her tenure at the White House this time around.
The Adam Lippes label is just over a decade old. While Lippes, known for his sophisticated take on American sportswear, is a well-liked figure among the American fashion establishment, he is hardly a household name in the way Lauren is. Back in 2017, starting with her inauguration look, there was a feeling that Trump, together with her husband, had something to prove. Not simply that they could dress the part—not necessarily as much of an issue for Melania, a former model—but that they could project the image of a proper, political, all-American first family. The choice of Lauren signalled that Trump had access, like any First Lady before her, to the best American fashion had to offer. That she could, too, assimilate into the role of First Lady with ease.
What Trump and her stylist Hervé Pierre—a former Carolina Herrera designer who made her 2021 Inauguration Ball gown—seem to be getting at is that this time around, she intends to play the fashion game like other First Ladies before her. She gets to wear the insidery name and stake a claim that she, too, can stand behind a designer and offer her support in the way Michelle Obama did for Isabel Toledo at the 2009 inauguration or how Dr Jill Biden did in Markarian by Alexandra O’Neill back in 2021.
The now First Lady could also be leveraging the occasion—one of the biggest stages for American fashion—to shift her sartorial strategy into one more aligned with her predecessors. An alignment with fashion could also portend more media and cultural attention on Trump, allowing her to emerge as a personality on her own, like First Ladies past. Yet, the industry’s history of not cooperating with the Trump administration could stand in the way of those ambitions. But that resistance is not a guarantee this time around. Is dressing Melania Trump a different question now than it was eight years ago?
A reticent industry
When Kamala Harris was sworn into office as Vice President back in 2021, she opted for a purple Christopher John Rogers coat. The night before, she wore Pyer Moss by Kerby Jean-Raymond and chose Sergio Hudson for the Inaugural Ball—all African American designers. Through the course of their tenures as First Ladies, Mrs Obama and Dr Biden showed an affinity for American designers and brands, the former famously making a point of wearing mall brands like J Crew and Gap. They both seemed to understand the power of their stations to uplift and change the trajectory of newcomers in the industry, as Obama did when she asked Jason Wu to design her Inaugural Ball gown. Trump, in contrast, never quite aligned herself with American fashion during her husband’s first term. She often wore European designers (Alexander McQueen by Sarah Burton, Christian Dior, Dolce Gabbana) acquired at retail, as opposed to the made-to-measure ensembles other First Ladies have been spotted in.
While not a requirement for the First Lady to wear custom-made pieces, the deliberate choice of not wearing American fashion often undermined her husband’s rhetoric of reinforcing the American economy and supporting the local industry. But why was Trump’s money not where her husband’s mouth was?
In some ways, it wasn’t an option. “I have no interest whatsoever in dressing Melania Trump,” Marc Jacobs told WWD in November 2016. “Personally, I’d rather put my energy into helping out those who will be hurt by Trump and his supporters.” Others in the New York fashion set at the time, including Phillip Lim and Derek Lam, declared they had no intentions of establishing a relationship with the Trump family.
Two designers who said they would dress Trump back then are Tommy Hilfiger and Thom Browne. (“Yes, I would dress Melania,” said Hilfiger. “I think she is a beautiful woman who would make any designer’s clothes look great.” Browne said: “Out of respect for the position of the First Lady of our United States, I would be honoured to be considered to design for any First Lady of the United States.”) Representatives for Hilfiger and Browne did not reply to requests for comment, though it should be said that neither of the designers outfitted the First Lady during her husband’s first term.
Back in 2017, it was something of a shock for the New York-based industry to see Ralph Lauren dress Trump. The designer had donated $13 million to the Smithsonian Museum of National History to restore the star-spangled banner at the behest of former President Bill Clinton and First Lady Hillary Clinton. Online, the hashtag #BoycottRalphLauren started trending on Twitter (now X). “The Presidential Inauguration is a time for the United States to look our best to the world,” the label said at the time. “It was important to us to uphold and celebrate the tradition of creating iconic American style for this moment.” The call for a boycott came and went, as most social media campaigns do.
Shifting tides
Will the same resistance hold? It is undeniable that there has been a swing towards conservatism in America, particularly seen in youth culture and Big Tech. Take the ‘trad wife’ aesthetic, Meta’s rolling back of professional fact-checking, or the mere fact that President Trump won the popular vote this election after losing it in 2016.
What this means for fashion is that to openly oppose conservative values could mean alienating more customers. Can it afford to? As we reported in late 2024, the global personal luxury market lost some 50 million consumers last year, and the current luxury slowdown has put a strain on the industry. In turn, fashion executives have traditionally been, at the least, cordial and diplomatic with both sides of the aisle.
Back in 2019, then-President Trump joined LVMH CEO Bernard Arnault at the inauguration of a Louis Vuitton factory in Texas. In 2022, Arnault attended a Biden-hosted state dinner at the White House, and both he and Kering’s François-Henri Pinault appeared at Emmanuel Macron’s reception for former President Joe Biden in June of last year. Arnault’s son, the former Tiffany exec and incoming deputy CEO of LVMH’s wine and spirits division, Alexandre Arnault was spotted at the Trump-Vance rally at Madison Square Garden last year. With this administration potentially raising tariffs for the very division Arnault Jr will help oversee (effective February 2025), the possibility that he is establishing a relationship with President Trump is not surprising.
Arnault and his daughter, Christian Dior CEO Delphine Arnault, were both at Monday’s inauguration. Tech giants, including Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg, also in attendance, have openly embraced the Trump administration (significantly, they’ve each donated $1 million to the event), while Kim Kardashian has been public about her affection for Ivanka Trump. Is it possible that the fashion industry could follow suit this time around and become more willing to align itself with the Trump administration?
A dose of pragmatism
For brands like Lippes’s, whose aesthetic tends to the tony and the uptown, it seems like a no-brainer to dress Melania. A representative for Oscar de la Renta—which dressed Second Lady Usha Vance this past weekend for the Vice President’s dinner and Ivanka for a separate event—recently told CNN that the brand is “always honoured when asked to dress the First Lady of the United States”, and that its mission is to “make her look and feel her best regardless of politics”. (Lippes, coincidentally, came up at Oscar de la Renta, where he worked closely with the late designer.)
Designers are understandably wary of alienating their democratic and progressive-leaning community of fellow fashion designers, editors and stylists, but bad press—or no press—does not negate the fact that as a public figure, Trump reaches a robust audience of shoppers who are often not catered to by the fashion establishment. Still, if the comment section under Oscar de la Renta sharing the First Daughter and Second Lady’s looks serves as any indication, consumers will continue to closely police labels and their political alignments.
Back in 2017, when Trump wore that Ralph Lauren ensemble, there was a sliver of hope that things “would not be that bad”; that the Trump-Pence campaign rhetoric would remain just that, rhetoric, and that it would soften and dissipate into the administration. One could have seen the fashion establishment following Lauren’s lead had this been the case.
But it was not, and fashion, if anything, doubled down on its rejection of the Trump family. They never attended a runway show in New York—nor anywhere else—and designers did not visit the White House officially or unofficially like they did in the past year under the Biden administration. Unlike her predecessors, Trump did not directly engage with the fashion establishment philanthropically either. There is now a precedent as we head into the second Trump administration, so the same rules don’t apply. Does this mean that the designers who decide to dress Melania Trump have let go of their values by aligning themselves with her? Not exactly. Should the industry or the public be surprised if and when Trump is embraced by fashion in a different capacity this time around? Not at all.
The hope is that the industry will continue to be steadfast in its intolerance to racism, xenophobia, transphobia and misogyny, but it would be remiss to ignore that a significant pocket of the United States voted for Donald Trump.
