It looks like one of the biggest burning questions about inauguration week — at least for fashionistas — might be answered: What will Melania Trump wear?
The tentative answer: Ralph Lauren and Karl Lagerfeld.
Some conservatives fear because of her racy past Melania will not look as a first lady should.
It’s unclear which Lagerfeld brand Trump might choose — Chanel, Fendi or his eponymous label, WWD reports.
Neither designer has confirmed, or denied, the reports.
“With multiple black-tie events scheduled for this week, Trump could be wearing the Ralph Lauren gown to a Trump family-hosted candlelight dinner for 1,500 Thursday night at Union Station,” the fashion publication predicts.
Trump and Clinton both wore Lauren before and after election night. Trump wore a white, one-shouldered Lauren jumpsuit when her husband gave his acceptance speech.
Clinton wore a Ralph Lauren Collection gray wool flannel jacket with purple silk charmeuse lapels and wool flannel pants when she conceded the next day.
The designers Trump wears this week are guaranteed immeasurable publicity.
Michelle Obama scored high praise for the inauguration day outfit she wore in 2009. Obama accessorized the creamy yellow dress and matching overcoat by Cuban-born designer Isabel Toledo with a crystal necklace and green leather gloves and shoes. The fashion world swooned.
From that point on, every sartorial move by the first lady “was anticipated, analyzed and dissected, almost always, that conversation came from a place of fascinated admiration,” WWD says.
People will be watching what Trump wears too. By fashion standards, she will be a dream to dress. The former model is “the sort designer houses typically salivate over — beautiful, thin, stylish, rich,” WWD proclaims.
But, she is also “a lightning rod of polarity,” because of her husband’s politics, WWD says.
Lines in the sand have already been drawn in a fashion industry that heavily endorsed Clinton for president.
After Election Day, designer Sophie Theallet, who has dressed Michelle Obama, issued a statement saying she would not dress Trump because of her husband’s campaign and urged other designers to do the same.
Fashion heavyweights Tom Ford and Marc Jacobs have both said they will not work with Trump. American designer Derek Lam is also taking a pass.
Other designers, including Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger, Diane von Furstenberg, Jean-Paul Gaultier and Carolina Herrera, have said they have no problem with dressing Trump.
“The Lauren-Lagerfeld duet would prove a major coup for Melania Trump. Conversely, for the designers, it’s a risk, as anyone dressing her, for a while at least, will become the object of a two-sided social media storm,” WWD notes.
“Yet given the pair’s stature at fashion’s pinnacle, saying yes to Trump may send a message to less-secure designing colleagues, some of whom have prior relationships with her but now fear bottom-line business repercussions. That message: Go with your gut.”
As for what kind of fashion style Trump will bring to the White House after the inauguration?
“Get ready for super-cinched waists, hourglass silhouettes and pencil skirts,” Vogue contributing editor André Leon Talley told The New York Times in December.
“She is already into one-shoulder, which Jackie Kennedy wore by Oleg Cassini. Melania likes monotone matching coats and beige dresses, but that hair will always be flying once she goes down the stairs of Air Force One.”
Talley knows Trump’s fashion sense first-hand and called her a “nice person.” He went with her to Paris to shop the couture shows to find her wedding dress for a 2005 Vogue feature.
“She has those impossibly high four-inch, towering stilettos,” he told the Times’ Maureen Dowd. “Clearly, her clothes will cling in the right places, accentuate her figure and her model-style long tresses.”
The big reveal is set for Friday, and conservatives are anxiously awaiting the fashion statement Melania will choose for the Presidential Inauguration.
(via: Kansas City)
