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Tailoring, tightly belted\u00a0trenchcoats\u00a0and sharply cut tuxedos are often her style of choice.\u00a0Occasionally military-inspired,\u00a0always highly polished and glamourous, Melania Trump’s style has been the subject of both adulation and consternation.\u00a0<\/p>\n
For some, she is the epitome of first lady style, for others, she embodies something else.\u00a0She famously wore sky-high heels en route to visit the site of a natural disaster and a pith hat \u2013 a symbol of colonial rule \u2013 on safari in Kenya.\u00a0Some point to her extravagant tastes \u2013 many of her outfits have price tags running well into the thousands.\u00a0But perhaps most famously there was a jacket she wore\u00a0on a visit to a child migrant detention centre\u00a0in 2018 that read\u00a0“I really don’t care. Do u?”\u00a0a message she later said was directed at the “leftwing media”.<\/p>\n
Trump’s wardrobe is picked over perhaps all the more given it is often the only communication tool she uses. “Melania is not known as a great speaker, which made her fashion choices even more important, because many times, that was her form of speech,” says Rabinovitch-Fox.\u00a0And\u00a0“as a former model, she is of course not a stranger to fashion, and she knows very well how to use clothes.”<\/p>\n
“In general, I think that today, first ladies understand the power of fashion, and are trying to build an image for them that represents the country, but also theirs, and their husbands’ agenda,” says Rabinovitch-Fox.<\/p>\n
It remains to be seen how this dynamic may shift when the US inaugurates its “first gentleman”.<\/p>\n
The Look by Michelle Obama is published by Crown Publishing Group in the US and Viking Press in the UK.<\/p>\n
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