Is Fashion Learning to Love the Trumps?

During US president Donald Trump’s first term, the relationship between fashion and the first lady, typically fruitful — think Jackie Kennedy’s pillbox hats and Michelle Obama’s Jason Wu and J.Crew — turned icy.

Melania Trump was treated as a totem for her husband’s most controversial stances, including his hostility toward immigrants and LGBTQ and women’s rights. Many designers in the historically left-leaning fashion establishment, including Marc Jacobs and Tom Ford, declared they would not dress her. Those that did faced backlash: After Ralph Lauren created her inaugural ensemble — usually considered a non-partisan show of patriotism — #BoycottRalphLauren trended on social media. She was not photographed for Vogue (an honour given to nearly all her predecessors dating back to Eleanor Roosevelt) let alone appeared on the cover, an honour bestowed upon both her immediate predecessor, Obama and successor, Jill Biden. First daughter Ivanka Trump, who once had a clothing line sold at Bloomingdale’s and Macy’s, was kept at an arm’s distance too.

“The outrage was quite raw,” said Robin Givhan, Washington Post senior critic-at-large and author of “Michelle: Her First Year as First Lady.” “People clearly responded to that.”

This time around feels different. The inauguration featured plenty of mainstream fashion moments: Oscar de la Renta dressed second lady Usha Vance and Ivanka Trump for various events. Ivanka wore custom looks from LVMH-owned Dior and Givenchy on inauguration day, and members of the Arnault family were in attendance in the Capitol rotunda. The independent American designers who dressed Melania Trump for the inauguration — Adam Lippes made her sculptural suit, Eric Javits her wide-brimmed hat — called it an honour.

Fashion is far from the only industry choosing engagement this time around. Business leaders are no doubt hoping to stay on the Trump administration’s good side as it rolls out policies on trade, diversity and other topics that have the potential to shake up the corporate status quo. But there’s also a widespread acknowledgement that a larger swath of these brands’ customers voted for Donald Trump.

“I always thought fashion was making a mistake in alienating Melania,” said Kate Bennett, author of the unauthorised biography “Free, Melania” and vice president of brand strategy at government relations and communications firm Invariant. “Fashion needs to sense the tone of the country and their customer in the same way other industries do.”

That’s not to say every brand is rushing to dress the Trumps. Many still see fashion’s buy-in as a symptom of the normalisation of a president who they see as a threat to democratic norms.

“All these people who were scared before of being associated with him … they’re all in now,” said Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in an interview with Jon Stewart.

A Model First Lady

For the designers behind Melania Trump’s inauguration look, the decision to work with the first lady appears to have been a rewarding one.

Traffic to Javits’ website — whose landing page is now dedicated to Trump — was around 15 times its typical volume; the brand averaged six-digit sales each day in the three days that followed, or seven times the norm, said Dario Markovic, Eric Javits’ chief executive. A number of retailers reached out in the week that followed, said designer Eric Javits.

For Lippes, the numbers were similarly impressive. The designer had the best week of sales in the company’s 10-year history, a spokesperson for the brand told The Business of Fashion over email. Instagram followers grew 30 percent, and though the brand has just 141,000 followers, more than two million people visited the page in the hours after the inauguration. Lippes declined to be interviewed.

There’s a disconnect between how brands treat Trump and the sales impact she has, according to Trump’s fashion consultant Hervé Pierre, who also designed her dress for the inaugural balls in 2017 and 2025.

“On one side of the spectrum, you have designers in their studios who are very cold to associate their names with my client, and on the other side you have the retail team who already knows that hours after she wears something, the phone will start ringing asking for that same piece she wore!” Pierre wrote in an email to BoF.

Despite her husband’s bellowing emphasis on America-made, Trump’s preference for European mega-brands is well documented. The inauguration raised the prospect that she could highlight more American designers, following in the footsteps of first ladies including Obama.

“I would like to prioritize American designers, but also need their help and support … If I found off the rack pieces that work for my client it is fine, but if I need something different, revisited or made, this is when I have a problem in New York,” said Pierre in an email. “This is the difference between certain American designers and Europeans.”

He added there’s not yet a discernible difference in interest in dressing Trump from the first term, but he “already got some texts from Paris.”

There’s no denying that Trump sparks a level of fascination, perhaps even beyond what the first lady usually attracts. On social media, she’s oft-memed, which makes conversation about her all the more viral. Commentators wondered whether Trump was using her inauguration hat as a defence against her husband’s kiss, for example.

“Because she speaks relatively rarely and shares herself relatively rarely, when she does people are particularly excited. They take every clue they can get about how she’s thinking about her job, which is representing the country,” said Vanessa Friedman, fashion director and chief fashion critic for The New York Times.

While grassroots outlets including The Conservateur and Instagram pages like MelaniaTrumpStyle (216,000 followers) and IvankaUpdates (138,000) have sprung up to chronicle the first family’s style, for those on the right, that Trump has not yet appeared on the cover of Vogue is still a point of contention. Often, it’s labeled a display of political bias on the part of global editorial director Anna Wintour, a Democratic supporter who hosted fundraisers for Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Though Vogue photographed former Republican first ladies like Laura Bush and Nancy Reagan for the magazine, it’s never put one on the cover. (Vogue declined to comment on its plans.)

Vogue.com thoroughly covered this year’s inauguration events, with a few pieces dedicated to Trump’s dress and what the rest of her circle wore. Stories included a dive into the deeper meaning behind Ivanka’s Givenchy gown; the provocative McQueen suit Lauren Sánchez, fiancé to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, wore to the swearing-in ceremony; and a scene report from the Make America Healthy Again gala.

Risks, Rewards and Real-World Business Considerations

For many fashion brands, the decision to engage with Trump’s circle comes down to economics: Who is their shopper, and what does the brand stand to gain? Or, in the case of a publication, is it relevant news and is there reader interest?

Investors widely believe Trump will be good for luxury: if he succeeds in lowering taxes, that will almost certainly correlate to a rise in spending. The Trumps’ impact will also be cultural. Luxury could benefit from a trickle-down effect of the Trumps’ tendency toward full glam and flaunting of wealth and power, journalist Andrea Felsted argued in an op-ed for Bloomberg.

“The lifestyles of the rich and famous have always been a good way to sell luxury fashion,” said Allen Adamson, founder of marketing firm Metaforce.

Plus, there appears to be less immediate risk in engaging than the first time around. Part of that is due to what Givhan calls general “outrage fatigue,” but also the fact that, this time, Trump won the popular vote. Designers need to think about what a wider move toward conservative ideals means for their businesses.

“You can’t ignore the direction the cultural pendulum of American society is swinging in,” said Jack Ryan, publicist at New York-based public relations firm Modeworld.

The viral fashion trends that have bubbled up over the past few years, including “trad wives,” and “old money,” evidence the wider turn toward conservatism. Right-leaning influencers are noticeably taking a larger share of voice. Even influencer-in-chief Kim Kardashian posted a photo of Trump’s outfit to her Instagram story, which commentators chalked up as an endorsement of sorts.

Markovic expected some negative blowback for dressing Trump but was ultimately surprised at how little the brand received. For others, the reaction has been more varied: Adam Lippes’ Instagram comments were a mix of congratulatory remarks like “elegance is back in the White House” and damning forecasts like “you’ll go down as the brand dressing the female face of fascism.”

It’s hard to jump to conclusions about what the inauguration period portends for the next four years and fashion, said Givhan. Plus, with a firebrand president at the helm, conversation could change at any point.

“We have to see how this develops because clearly the Trump administration is acting very quickly to keep its promises in a way maybe some people didn’t anticipate,” said Friedman.