- Melania Trump gave a rare speech last night at the RNC to make the case for her husband’s reelection, expressing her sympathy for COVID-19 victims and calling for racial unity, while wearing a military-style olive green skirt suit.
- CNN’s Jake Tapper reported that Melania didn’t run the speech by the West Wing. While its conciliatory tone contrasted with Trump’s usually brash speeches, some of her words were contradicted by her own past actions.
- But a speech full of contradictions is actually pretty on brand for Melania, who is primarily known for having a keen sense of style that’s been compared to fellow first lady Jackie Kennedy’s.
- Melania has used fashion as both her cloak of invisibility and her weapon of choice.
- While Melania has plenty of style, her legacy – unlike Jackie O’s – is lacking.
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On Tuesday night, Melania Trump walked into her newly renovated White House Rose Garden for night two of the Republican National Convention.
Standing high in her heels, wearing an olive green skirt suit reminiscent of a general’s jacket, her look was a clear nod to the country’s military families. But perhaps it was also a symbol: Had she come to protect and defend the ideals of Trumpism?
The suit, created by British designer Sarah Burton for Alexander McQueen, is from McQueen’s Resort 2020 Collection. In its November coverage of the runway show, Vogue called pieces in the collection “botanically weaponized ready-to-wear … the perfect armor for any shrinking violet set on blossoming into a tall poppy totally immune to pruning.”
Fitting, it seems, for Melania’s purposes at the RNC last night.
On an aesthetic level, Melania's green outfit stood in stark contrast against her recently renovated Rose Garden, with its "minimalist" and overwhelmingly white new design. But it fit perfectly against the background of America: the reds, whites, and blues of the country's flag, and the olive green of its military history.
The absence of color in Melania's rose garden mirrors the glaringly white lineup of the RNC
As she stood in front of her new garden last night, Melania made the case for the nation's democracy: "Our diverse and storied history is what makes our country strong," she said last night. "And yet, we still have so much to learn from one another."
But there's a strange tension in the figure of Melania Trump, first lady for the most nativist and divisive president in American history.
In a long line of first ladies virtually always born in the US, she is only the second wife of a president to have been born outside of it (after London-born Louisa Adams, the wife of John Quincy Adams). Melania is also the first whose native tongue isn't English as well as the first naturalized US citizen.
By virtue of those facts, Melania technically ranks among the most diverse first ladies ever, and aspects of her life story carry lessons that resonate throughout American history: About the importance of opportunity, the dangers of nationalism, and what wearing a nicely tailored outfit will help you get away with.
Melania Trump's comparisons to other well-dressed first ladies ring hollow considering her legacy - or lack thereof
Ahead of her speech, Peter Navarro, a trade adviser for the White House, called Melania the "Jackie Kennedy of her time," saying she has the "beauty, the elegance, the soft-spokenness" of JFK's first lady.
Vogue's Edward Barsamian has also made this comparison, saying that on Trump's Inauguration day, Melania "laid the foundation" in her quest to help redefine the politics of fashion by wearing a blue Ralph Lauren dress that was "Camelot-inspired."
Barsamian was ostensibly referencing the early-1960s era when "Camelot" was the hottest show on Broadway and America had a youthful King Arthur and Guinevere of its own in the White House.
But Melania's comparisons to Jackie Kennedy pretty much end at the hem.
Unlike Melania, Jackie O was known for standing solidly behind something - she was a patron of the arts, known not just for her renovations of the White House, but also, during the presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson, for contributing support to both the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities (both long targeted by Republican politicians, including Trump).
Melania, on the other hand, oscillates - mostly silently - between being annoyed at and vaguely supportive of her husband.
She regularly smacks Trump's hand away from her in public and has launched an anti-cyberbullying campaign called "Be Best," even though her husband has made cyberbullying into a fact of public life.
But when the president was criticized for interning children at the border, she wore a jacket that read "I really don't care, do U?" while visiting those same kids. And after her husband was heard on tape making crude remarks about the female anatomy, she wore a pink blouse with a bow named after that same body part.
Melania has long used fashion as both a cloak of invisibility and her weapon of choice. Her expressions are often as carefully composed and indecipherable as her perfectly tailored gowns, polished hair, and manicured hands, wrapped along the handles of an endless variety of Hermes Birkin bags.
By and large, Melania's poised style hasn't been matched by her prose, except when she spoke movingly at the RNC four years ago - although that speech turned out to be strikingly similar to one given by yet another former first lady, Michelle Obama.
From a style lens, the public perception of the current first lady and her predecessor couldn't be more different.
Michelle was often criticized, not celebrated, for wearing expensive clothes - whereas Melania often wins praise for her fashion choices. Michelle was noted for her love of more affordable brands, such as J Crew, and was most likely to don a pair of Converse sneakers on a day's outing.
Of course, affordable isn't Melania's schtick - it's Manolo Blahnik or bust. And the people seem to have no problem with that.
But perhaps what Michelle lacked in an endless supply of Dolce & Gabbana gowns, she made up for in charismatic social efforts that have helped define her public persona - and current career as a professional speaker - today.
Last night's speech was on-brand for Melania: soft-spoken, full of contradictions, but ultimately well-polished on a surface level
The public address, a rarity for Melania, stuck out because of how tonally different it was from other RNC speeches these past two nights, as CNN's Jake Tapper noted during the live broadcast.
At the same time, much of what she said is in direct contrast to her past actions. And while she said she's been "reflecting" on recent racial unrest and briefly acknowledged the nation's violent past, she didn't engage very deeply or meaningfully with the issue.
"It is a harsh reality that we are not proud of parts of our history," Melania said of America's legacy - one that includes her own birtherism nearly a decade ago, when she supported her husband in calling for then-President Obama to release his birth certificate to prove he was born in the US.
Still, Melania's speech had clear moments of compassion, and she spoke with a gentleness and eloquence that is simply not found in Trump's typical manner of speaking.
Unlike most in the lineup, she didn't attack liberals, and, as The New York Times pointed out, she was one of the few RNC speakers to acknowledge the lives lost during the coronavirus pandemic. She also addressed the country's ongoing opioid epidemic and spoke about her plans as the first lady for the next four years.
"Total honesty is what we as citizens deserve from our president," she said, and then later, without a hint of irony, slammed social media for being an incubator for bullies.
It's ironic that Melania is such a relative non-entity in the political realm - because, given her background, she could speak more powerfully than most to the tumultuous American present
Melania is from Slovenia, a country that didn't even exist until the 1990s and whose independence was one of the many dominoes that toppled in the world created by the US' victory in the Cold War. She moved abroad after Slovenia declared its independence, and said last night that she spent 10 years working on naturalization paperwork to become a United States citizen.
She even touched on her status as an immigrant and her birth country.
"Growing up as a young child in Slovenia, which was under communist rule at the time, I always heard about an amazing place called America," she said last night. "As an immigrant and a very independent woman, I understand what a privilege it is to live here and to enjoy the freedoms and opportunities that we have. As first lady, I have been fortunate to see the American dream come true over and over again."
Slovenia largely avoided getting drawn into the bloody wars of the former Yugoslavian republics, in the region known as the Balkans. The nationalism that set these republics against one another after they lived in peace for decades became known as "Balkanization." Some historians have warned of it happening elsewhere - even in the increasingly tribalistic United States.
Melania's move to America around 1996, when she was 26, coincided with the second term of Bill Clinton. It was also shortly after the so-called "Republican Revolution" that swept a new breed of right-wing leaders into public life - including several noted supporters of her future husband, like Newt Gingrich and Rudy Giuliani.
Their careers closely track America's tendencies toward a kind of Balkanization. If she wanted to, Melania could speak out against the dangers of this kind of division, having lived through it herself.
To be fair, politics aside, it's true that women are allowed to just be attractive and well-dressed; Melania doesn't owe us her time or her energy.
But if she has been trying to craft a real legacy while in the shadow of her husband, her attempts have only made her a pulchritudinous shadow, too - dolled up, made-up, standing on pillars in sinking sand.
If Melania spoke more about her own experience as an American immigrant, she could, as Michelle Obama has for the Democrats, emerge as a powerful female voice in her party, alongside the few diverse female leaders the party already has: Indian American Nikki Hailey and Kimberly Guilfoyle, who cited herself as "a first generation-American," the daughter of Irish and Puerto Rican immigrants (much to the dismay of those who pointed out that Puerto Ricans have been US citizens since 1917).
But instead, Melania is sticking to her long-established brand: good but not great speeches, touching on the surface level of real, urgent issues - but ultimately, not saying much.
In the end, perhaps Melania is simply, once again, letting her clothes do the talking: In her military-style jacket, she's like a sentry, safeguarding Trumpism but not meaningfully contributing to it at all. For better or worse.