Melania Trump’s Most Controversial Fashion Choices

By now, Melania Trump should be used to criticism of her wardrobe. And yet, when her decision to wear a pith helmet during a trip to Africa earned another round of media attention, Trump told reporters, “I wish people would focus on what I do, not what I wear.” It’s a bold request from any First Lady, but perhaps especially for Trump, who has frequently chosen to speak through her clothes—sometimes in literal writing, and sometimes in symbolism that’s simultaneously obvious but impossible to interpret. Here, a look back at Trump’s most questionable, but seemingly significant, fashion choices.

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October 2016: Pussy-bow blouse

One of Trump’s first headline-making sartorial choices was the pink blouse she wore to one of the presidential debates in October 2016. The debate came just days after the release of the Access Hollywood tape, which caught a 2005-era Donald Trump on a hot mic making disparaging comments about women to Billy Bush, saying, “When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab ‘em by the pussy.” The Gucci blouse Trump wore to the debate happened to feature a prominent “pussy-bow” detail, which may or may not have been a total coincidence. Melania, as usual, did not explain further.

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By Giovanni Isolino/AFP/Getty Images.

May 2017: $51,500 Dolce & Gabbana jacket

Trump wore the floral Dolce & Gabbana jacket during a visit to Sicily in May 2017, a seemingly innocuous choice—Dolce & Gabbana is an Italian fashion house, and fashion diplomacy is a First Lady tradition. She raised eyebrows, however, when people learned that the coat retailed for $51,500.

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By Alex Wong/Getty Images.

August 2017: Hurricane heels

While Texas was dealing with the devastating effects of Hurricane Harvey in August 2017, Donald and Melania Trump suited up to see the damage firsthand, which, for Melania, included a pair of sky-high stilettos. While she changed into more sensible footwear before landing, it was an indelible image of the First Lady sauntering into a natural-disaster zone in heels.

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By Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images.

August 2017: “FLOTUS” baseball cap

While visiting a firehouse in Corpus Christi, Texas, in the wake of Hurricane Harvey, Trump took a page out of her husband’s own fashion handbook, wearing a baseball cap with “FLOTUS” embroidered across the front. Call it MAGA merch, but make it fashion.

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By Win McNamee/Getty Images.

September 2017: Gardening in Balmain

At first glance, Trump’s gardening look almost appeared sensible. While tending to the White House Kitchen Garden in September 2017, Trump wore dark jeans, a pair of Converse sneakers, gardening gloves, and a plaid shirt. This wasn’t just any plaid shirt, however. This was a $1,380 Balmain plaid shirt.

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By Chris Kleponis/Sipa USA.

January 2018: All-white at the State of the Union

For the State of the Union address in January 2018, Trump turned heads when she arrived in an all-white look, a color symbolically associated with the women’s suffrage movement and worn throughout the 2016 campaign by Hillary Clinton, as well as many Democratic women to Trump’s first congressional address. Was she wearing white as a middle finger to Clinton and the Democrats? Was she signaling her own suffragette leanings? As per usual, it was impossible to know.

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By Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images.

June 2018: “I Really Don’t Care” jacket

The jacket read round the world. During a June 2018 visit to a detention center in Texas housing migrant children separated from their families at the Mexican border, Trump donned a Zara jacket that read “I Really Don’t Care, Do U?” As it turned out, people really did. Her particular choice in outerwear was almost universally deemed insensitive given where she was going and her husband’s immigration policies that resulted in families being broken up for weeks at a time. Later, an anonymous source told The New York Times that the message on her jacket was actually aimed at anyone “who wanted to criticize her decision to visit the children in light of the administration’s aggressive immigration policies.” Still, it’s hard to interpret such a layered message through a jacket alone.

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By Al Drago/Getty Images.

July 2018: “Trash flair” Louboutins

Shortly after her Zara jacket fiasco, Trump headed off to Europe with her husband in a pair of red-and-nude Louboutins. While this normally wouldn’t be anything newsworthy, the particular heels worn by Trump in July 2018 were an $800 pair made from pieces of “hand-torn” Louboutin shopping bags and described by the brand as having an “audacious new trash flair.”

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By Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images.

October 2018: Pith helmet in Kenya

Criticized for wearing the headwear associated with colonialism in Africa during her trip to Kenya in October 2018, Trump told the press that she wished “people would focus on what I do, not what I wear.” A few days later, a clip from her ABC interview with Tom Llamas showed Trump seated, with the hat strategically placed on a table beside her, making it all the more difficult for people to pay attention to anything else.

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