Melania Trump appeared to be all business to join President Trump for Monday’s signing of the Take It Down Act.
Wearing a double-breasted gray Prada skirt suit, the first lady not only spoke at the podium about the legislation, but she cosigned it after President Trump did. The first lady had lobbied for the bipartisan bill that is meant to curb online exploitation and the nonconsensual sharing of sexually explicit videos and photos on Capitol Hill earlier this year. The legislation includes artificial intelligence-generated fakes.
The first lady’s signature was not standard procedure for Rose Garden signings. The Prada ensemble was not a new purchase, but a suit that Trump wore last year for a European magazine photo shoot and another event that was not open to the press, according to her stylist Hervé Pierre. The designer suit, which is in a feint plaid, was said to have been purchased at Prada’s Madison Avenue store in New York City. Coincidentally, Infusion de Rose Eau de Parfum is a fragrance by Prada Beauty.
President Donald Trump looks on as first lady Melania Trump signs the Take It Down Act.
Getty Images
Menswear is a major spring trend, thanks largely to the Costume Institute’s “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. FLOTUS wore a tank pantsuit, white shirt and dark necktie for her trip to Capitol Hill in March with Sen. Ted Cruz, a cosponsor of the Take It Down Act. During President Trump’s remarks at the Monday afternoon signing, he spoke of his two-hour phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who reportedly said among other things that “they like Melania better” than Trump.
Asked about FLOTUS’ look, Deirdre Clemente, a historian and curator of 20th-century American material culture at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said, “Affiliated with board rooms and office attire, gray suits mean business. The first lady’s new taste for them is delivering a cultural message. She has abandoned her more feminine attire to dress like the people in power: men.”
Trump previously left her mark on the Rose Garden in other ways, having reconfigured it in 2020. Gone were 10 crab apple trees that the late horticulturist’s Bunny Mellon had included in her transformation of the Rose Garden under former first lady Jacqueline Kennedy’s watchful eyes, which prompted much criticism. A good number of plants and flowers also got the heave-ho, and the irrigation system was replaced with a new one.
Although more than 112 years ago there had been a rose garden under glass where the official Rose Garden now rests, it was former President Woodrow Wilson’s first wife Ellen Axson Wilson who set up the first open-air rose garden at the White House. Her creation “reflected the sophisticated gardening taste of a woman familiar with the modern Beaux-Arts ideas that gardens served architecture,” according to the White House Historical Association. Axson Wilson also set up her own take on a grand entrance, by creating a lengthy privet-bordered walkway “to give the president a handsome approach from the White House to the West Wing.” She dubbed that gateway the “president’s walk.”
Melania Trump walks along the Rose Garden colonnade before the Rose Garden ceremony.
Getty Images
Other attendees at Monday’s signing turned up in more flowery shades like chief of staff Susie Wiles’ pale green suit and blouse and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s ultralight ecru ensemble. Earlier in the day the pastel-leaning White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt wore a butter yellow pantsuit and top for a briefing at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Trump’s front woman is known to work with the designer Christopher Cuozzo, who runs a “Custom Menswear Fit Lab” and has a phone number that ends with four letters in lieu of numbers — “SUIT.” Cuozzo did not respond immediately to a media request Monday.