This Legendary Designer Will Be ‘Proud’ to Dress Melania Trump

Just days after Sophie Theallet called for designers to refrain from dressing Melania Trump, Tommy Hilfiger told WWD that designers should consider it an honor to dress the incoming first lady and first daughter, Ivanka Trump.

“I think Melania is a very beautiful woman and I think any designer should be proud to dress her,” the American designer told WWD. “Ivanka is equally as beautiful and smart, although she wears her own clothes. I don’t think people should become political about it. Everyone was very happy to dress Michelle [Obama] as well. I think they look great in the clothes. You’re not gonna get much more beautiful than Ivanka or Melania.”

Theallet wrote an open letter last week explaining why she wouldn’t dress Trump and called on other designers to follow her lead. “As one who celebrates and strives for diversity, individual freedom and respect for all lifestyles, I will not participate in dressing or associating in any way with the next First Lady,” she wrote, according to WWD. “The rhetoric of racism, sexism and xenophobia unleashed by her husband’s presidential campaign are incompatible with the shared values we live by.”

But no designers have publicly signed onto Theallet’s boycott — even though many of the fashion industry’s power players supported Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton over President-elect Donald Trump.

Hilfiger has praised the Trumps in the past. Ivanka Trump notably appeared in an ad for Hilfiger during the 1990s. The designer spoke about working with the younger Trump during an interview with Yahoo Style before the election. “She was a doll, she was a sweetheart,” Hilfiger told Yahoo. “She is today. More sophisticated, more grown up. She’s an amazing girl.”

[WWD]