13 hours ago
4
You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load.
The first lady’s outfit was fully in line with the controlled and contained public image she had been crafting since the end of her husband’s first term.
June 14, 2025, 7:18 p.m. ET
It wasn’t exactly dress whites, but it was dressy and white, with thin blue pinstripes and shiny silver buttons. And while it may not have had epaulets, it did have shoulder pads.
As Melania Trump took her place next to her husband in the presidential viewing stand to watch the Army’s 250th anniversary parade, her suit suggested that if he was the commander in chief, she was his general. As he has his own uniform of Pavlovian patriotism (navy suit, white shirt and red tie), she has hers. Regalia takes all forms.
As such, the suit was something of a riposte to those who would still see her as a reluctant political spouse: Whether or not she spends all her time in the White House, she’s there, and appropriately costumed for key scenes like this one.
And it was fully in line with the almost militantly controlled and contained public image Mrs. Trump had been crafting since the end of her husband’s first term, when she wore an army green Alexander McQueen skirt suit to give her speech at the Republican National Convention in 2020. She even wore a trench coat, a garment originally made for British soldiers in World War I, to the White House Easter Egg Roll in April.
Politics is a battlefield, she has always seemed to be saying, and you have to armor yourself accordingly. Even if only in a buttoned-up skirt suit, with stilettos on your feet instead of in your pockets.
If this particular skirt suit — a double-breasted cotton twill blazer with a matching high-waisted pencil skirt — was a little more navy (or country club navy) than army, it still had an awfully regimental vibe.
