The Politics of Fashion Under the Trump Administration

When I need to know how to #dresslikeawoman who is better dressed than I am, I call my friend Brenda, who is a professor at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City. She is more than stylish — she’s a wardrobe artist. Her advice is to skip the usual black when you want to feel confident. “Wear white,” she says. “It’s an ‘I dare you’ color. It’s the color of courage.”

This might be particularly true for those of us who spend half the day carrying around a cup of coffee, but she does have a point in general. After decades in which women tried to blend into a room of dark suits, a woman dressed all in white is making a statement. Consider Hillary Clinton. You can trace her rise and fall in white pantsuits. She wore white to accept the Democratic nomination, at her last debate and then, finally, at the Inauguration of Donald Trump, where it was anything but the white of surrender.

In fact, you could tell the entire story of the past year in politics just by looking at what people wore or refused to wear. Nearly every controversial or inspirational moment has its own signature piece in the identity-politics collection. It started with the pantsuits and those red Make America great again caps, and went right to pink “pussyhats” and boycotts of Ivanka’s #womenwhowork-themed fashion, some of which is made by women who work in other countries. Fashion hasn’t been this politicized since the ’60s, when the length of a man’s hair or a woman’s skirt was an ideological choice.

But those days were comparatively tame. On Feb. 2, when Axios quoted a source who worked on the campaign as saying President Trump prefers his female staffers to “dress like women,” people flooded the Internet with images of female soldiers, surgeons and firefighters in their gear, along with icons like Ruth Bader Ginsburg in her lace collar and Malala Yousafzai in a headscarf, all tagged #dresslikeawoman.

It’s a little late, but those objectors are now more united and motivated than they were before the election. That sea of pink hats at the giant women’s marches in January was an outward sign of a new sense of purpose. Those hats continue to pop up at the many other protests since the Inauguration, an ongoing reminder of Trump’s odious boasts about grabbing women by the genitals.

Not coincidentally, the President’s supporters had the look of a real team long before his opposition did. Thanks to those ubiquitous campaign caps, Trump rallies were branded early on. And they made for an impressive show of muscular red at all those televised rallies.

Now it’s red vs. pink. During the week we see images of almost all-white, all-male Cabinet nominees who look like attendees at a Mad Men convention. Even the two CEOs Trump tapped to advise on women in the workplace are men. And on weekends we see a recurring rainbow of protesters with women leading the charge.

Ivanka Trump seems to be caught in the jaws of this divide. It’s hard to separate her clothing line from her father’s hard-line politics. Millennial women are less inclined to shop Ivanka’s look as an ugly election turns into an even more divisive presidency. And the campaign to boycott all Trump-related businesses aren’t helping sales either. Nordstrom says it’s not stocking the brand this season due to declining demand, and Neiman Marcus has dropped her jewelry from its website.

And if Ivanka’s clothing business hadn’t become politicized enough, the President jumped into the fray on February 8th to reprimand Nordstrom via Twitter for dropping his daughter’s line this season. The next day, that already blurry line between the White House and Trump family businesses all but disappeared when Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway appeared on Fox & Friends and told viewers to “go buy Ivanka’s stuff.” We may be at a mind-bending moment when buying a pair of suede “Ivanka Trump Dazy Booties” will be seen by some as a patriotic act in support of the President, and by others as supporting policies that embrace bigotry.

Ivanka is billed as a modern, moderate voice in the Administration. Even her father’s Tweet about Nordstrom pushed that idea: “She is a great person — always pushing me to do the right thing!” he wrote. But her lifestyle website recalls another era. She and the other women in the Trump family tableau are a confection of constant perfection and femininity that seems as retro as the days when wearing pants on the Senate floor was a sign of protest.

Those personal Instagram posts that were once great brand promotion now seem out of touch. On the same weekend that thousands of separated families were first hit with the devastating consequences of Trump’s Executive Order banning entry into the U.S. from seven mostly Muslim countries, Ivanka shared a photo of herself dressed up for an event in a silver gown. The dress was gorgeous. The reaction to her post was not.

Ivanka is discovering that everything she wears or sells is now political. There is no comfortable middle between red and pink. Everyone is taking sides, and she’ll be judged like any other woman in politics, harshly and often unfairly. She likely knows that already. Hillary Clinton wasn’t the only woman on the Inauguration dais in a white pantsuit.