‘Money does not whisper – it shouts’: how Trump 2.0 ushered in a brutish new era of power dressing
The age of Donald Trump is an assault on the senses. There is a brutish grandeur to a president who, in his heavy, shoulder-padded Brioni suits, looks like a buffalo painted by Holbein. Geopolitics has been warped into a Lord of the Flies fever dream, presided over by a bronze face-painted playground bully. Bedazzled cowboy hats and Maga caps, YMCA and raised fists, speak of a culture with the volume dial turned up. Just as power has been cut free from responsibility, so has prestige been unchained from taste. Trump 2.0 feels like a Space Mountain ride with no safety bar – and it is just getting started.
Fashion speaks loudly in this new world. Two weeks into the second Trump term, power dressing already has a new look. Out with the careful patrician decorum of the Bidens, in with a novel era of American bling. The cultured metropolitan allure of the Obamas is a distant memory, overlaid with bright lights, big hair, vulgar slogans and expensive logos. Elon Musk’s preposterous flight jacket. Melania Trump’s strange hat. Lauren Sánchez’s inauguration-day lingerie. It is, as the kids say, a lot.
It is very easy to trash-talk the Trump look. Easy, but simplistic – and also dangerous. Simplistic, because his image has an undeniable blockbuster appeal. A lot of people – 77,284,118 voters, to be precise – like what they see. Dangerous, because to sneer and sniff at an aesthetic that rips up the establishment rulebook plays directly into Trump’s hands.
The Trump look has had a glow-up for its second term. In contrast to the cheerless tone set by a carnage-themed inauguration speech eight years ago, Trump 2.0 arrived in Washington DC setting a newly merry tone. There were more smiles, more celebrities, more beautiful people on board. The messaging was simple, but effective. Big parties with hamburgers and fireworks are fun. Having lots of money is fun. Winning is fun. A century of Hollywood history proves that audiences love men with big muscles and women with bouncy blond hair. At a party packed with wealthy young Trump supporters in Butterworth’s restaurant in Washington on the weekend of the swearing in, a 28-year-old conservative influencer, Xaviaer DuRousseau, told New York magazine: “It’s Republican Coachella and Donald Trump is our Beyoncé.”
The first rule of storytelling is to show, not tell, and that is precisely how Trump and his circle get dressed. In Trump’s world, men are men and women are women. Even before he signed an executive order proclaiming that the US government will recognise only two sexes, male and female, the optics of his entourage were making this point.
Trump’s suits are square and oversized, no dandyish touches of silk pocket squares or discreetly nipped waists, certainly no modish short trouser hems. The broligarchy of Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg are gym-pumped and wear just-jumped-off-the-helicopter aviator shades. The Fox News contributor Kellyanne Conway and Megyn Kelly, the conservative podcaster who described Trump’s return to the White House as “an instant utopia”, are the frontwomen for a vision of femininity rooted in the California blondes of Sweet Valley High teen fiction.
There has also been increased demand for the Republican blowout: scaled up to TV studio proportions, it is bigger and bouncier than the understated sleek bobs of the Democratic era. This is a world in which women never get wrinkles, never go grey and fit into their wedding dresses for ever. One glance at his entourage shows that Trump’s anti-woke policy waits for no legislation: it is already strictly enforced.
Zuckerberg calls it “masculine energy”, but we can keep calling it the patriarchy. The women in Trump’s camp have two dominant looks. There is very demure, ultra-ladylike tailoring with an emphasis on the waist for the daytime and bare-shouldered ballgowns for evening. The duality comes with an unspoken pressure to prioritise getting home to get changed and put hot rollers in your hair over anything else on your to-do list. Both looks have a mid-century, retro flavour.
For the inauguration, Ivanka Trump, the most fluent fashion speaker of the tribe, wore a forest-green skirt suit inspired by a 1950 Dior collection, followed by an evening gown modelled on one made by Hubert de Givenchy for Audrey Hepburn in the 1954 film Sabrina. She even carbon-dated the look with full-length opera gloves. Usha Vance, who after the inauguration ceremony swapped a very covered coquette-pink coat for a strapless dress, followed suit. The rise of the tradwife aesthetic – a gen Z social media trend for young women to play idealised housewives, cooking elaborate meals for broods of adorable children without ever chipping a nail, getting jam on a white poplin prairie dress or letting a smile drop – suggests this retrograde cosplay may have cross-generational appeal.
Dressing in the age of Trump is also about money. Here, the golden rule is simple: whoever has the gold makes the rules. The billionaires are in charge, so if you want your voice to be heard, you need to look rich. Zuckerberg has taken to wearing a $900,000 (£730,000) Greubel Forsey watch. Melania has never made any attempt to tone down her expensive tastes, which include a preference for Christian Louboutin stilettos and a substantial collection of Hermès Birkin bags, which sell for between $30,000 and $90,000.
Such is the power of money that when money goes head to head with ideas about gender, money wins. Sánchez defied every feminine dress code at the inauguration by wearing a lace bra exposed under her Alexander McQueen jacket. The vibe seemed to be: when your fiance is Bezos, you do what you like. No shade on Sánchez, who is entitled to wear what she chooses. But it is interesting to observe the power of money to abruptly shunt the Overton window of what is and isn’t acceptable at a state occasion.
Elite dressing has always been about looking rich, but this is a different kind of rich. In Trump’s court, money does not whisper in the cashmere soft tones of quiet luxury – it shouts. Old money talks in code, in classy under-the-radar brands such as the Italian houses of Loro Piana and Brunello Cucinelli. In an establishment where power is handed down through generations, it is helpful to look as if you have grown up rich. But Trump’s origin story of being a self-made man – fake news, but whatever – is cannily reflected in the clumsiness of his look: too-wide ties, too-dark tan. It is an outsider’s idea of how rich men dress. To reinforce this message, he has been known to swap the suit for a rubbish collector’s hi-vis vest, or a McDonald’s apron, both of which he wore on the campaign trail last year.
The one person in Trump’s orbit who does not jump to his beat is the first lady, who has confounded expectations with her reluctance to play the trophy wife. Her new official portrait, which shows her in a trouser suit – a bold move in itself – has strong LinkedIn energy, with an enigmatic Melania in power pose behind a mirror-polished desk. (Jill Biden wore a pink dress and smiled in the Rose Garden in hers.) Melania makes no pretence of playing nice. From the “I Really Don’t Care, Do U?” jacket to the hat that concealed her face at the inauguration, her clothes are dismissive of, if not openly hostile to, other people.
But what could be more Trumpian than a first lady who tramples all over the accepted wardrobe rules of Washington? Like her husband, Melania sees her position not as one of service, but in terms of what it can do for her. Yet, perhaps accidentally, Melania’s blatant disregard for the rules fulfils one of the unofficial functions of first lady, which is to humanise the president. Who can forget the image of Trump gamely attempting to greet his wife in the Capitol and being thwarted by the brim of a hat that made it impossible for him to land a kiss. A hat can assert boundaries as effectively as any fence. Trump never seems more vulnerable than in the presence of Melania.
Ivanka is unique in her ability to shapeshift between Trump’s world and that of the liberal elite. She can do GOP Barbie, but she can also fit in at Frieze art fair. In 2017, she effectively trolled the fashion community by wearing a mismatched pair of earrings, as though she was trying to say she was just like them. It has been reported that the symbolism of her Dior inauguration suit, nodding to Paris’s postwar New Look, a moment in which a country on the verge of change reached for a nostalgic vision of femininity, was not lost on Ivanka. Her fashion agenda is not to be underestimated.
There is one more style reference to mention here. Trump claims that divine intervention saved him from assassination in Pennsylvania in July. He believes he has been anointed a king by God. His first lady, meanwhile, has made hats a signature look, which is hard to miss as an allusion to royalty, in particular to the long reign of Queen Elizabeth II. The Trumps, who would like this second term to lay the groundwork for a new American dynasty, with their children following them into the Oval Office, are moving toward framing themselves as a royal family. Ivanka’s costuming of her family on inauguration day, with her monocolour outfit echoed in the camel outfit of her daughter, had unmistakable overtones of the Cambridges, with 13-year-old Arabella Kushner’s caped coat reminiscent of the cape and dress worn by Princess Charlotte at King Charles III’s coronation. Fashion speaks loud and clear in the court of Trump. None of us can afford not to be listening.
