Melania Trump closed out the second night of the Republican National Convention with a 20-minute speech that certainly did not plagiarize one of Michelle Obama’s. She chose for the night’s raiments an Alexander McQueen ensemble, with a jacket currently on sale for under $1500 and the skirt a steal for $540. The shoes had the signature blood red soles of Louboutin. The overall effect was very police state in the newly renovated Rose Garden.
The first lady has gone for the paramilitary look before, but usually she’s out in the field, visiting hurricane clean-up sites or meeting actual members of the military and their families. Perhaps for this particular Tuesday night, when she was to speak in front of the country for the first time in a long time, it was a way of toughening up. Melania is a reluctant public speaker, and there are few moments when she goes on record. Clothes can be armor, you know, and here maybe literally so. It couldn’t hurt either that the skirt’s knee length and the precision of the cinched waist recalled a time when wars were a little easier to get behind, like the 40s, right? That at least sounds like a real boon for an ever-backwards looking candidate, her husband.
Melania doesn’t usually go for this kind of stuff, divining meaning in what she wears, but there are a lot of metaphors that could be drawn from the ten-hut of it all. The country is battling Covid; the party is battling the specters of cancel culture and also protests (she called to the end of “looting in the name of justice” in the same breath that she said one should “never make assumptions based on the color of a person’s skin”); and she is personally focused on fighting the opioid crisis and anything bad that could happen to children, except, of course, those impacted by the Trump administration’s immigration policies. Embattled then was the theme, and Melania always dresses to theme.
As for the speech itself, most of it sounded like a State of Be Best address, a recap of her travels and her appointments in service of her sprawling initiative. Eventually she put in a plug for her husband, but whether or not she is battling him is for her god to know and first couple marriage truthers to find out.
Two storylines were top of mind prior to tonight’s performance: the Rose Garden makeover, which was finished in time for her speech; and the plagiarism problem of her last Republican National Convention speech, back in 2016, when it appeared as though she had lifted lines directly from her predecessor’s speech from years before
The Rose Garden, remodeled with private donations and overseen by the White House Association, got some flack when it was revealed on Saturday. Detractors saw it as rigid and sterile in comparison to the old version, created by landscaper to the well-connected, Bunny Mellon. The Rose Garden remodel was a long time coming and the reality is that Melania’s input probably did not significantly impact the choices made, but you could see why she wanted to stage her address there. Though it’s technically illegal to hold campaign events at the White House, a little illegality is a small price to pay for a shot of the first lady walking along its rigidly manicured edge in luxury fatigues.
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