Last year many in media raged over her red trees. This year some hate the First Lady’s coat so much they wrote a boatload of words about how much they hate it and make her sound like a villain on my mom’s favorite yesteryear show, “Dynasty.”
But more than a silly fashion folly, the coat is a distraction. It’s a discomforting affectation taken to a ludicrous extreme. In a video that is intended to celebrate the warmth and welcoming spirit of the holiday season, that simple flourish exudes cold, dismissive aloofness.
As Trump gazes pleasantly at all that her staff and a host of volunteers have accomplished, her attire suggests that she’s casually passing through and has little affinity for the occasion. She’s not getting comfortable, so why should you?
She has styled herself in a manner that contradicts what her staff has so often insisted — that she is an engaged hostess who sweats the details and frets about her guests’ comfort. Instead, she looks like the sort of host who greets her guests at the front door, tells them to remove their shoes and warns them not to sit on the Lalanne sheep.
I had to Google “Lalanne sheep” because I had no idea to what they were referring. Is that something wealthy WaPo writers have sitting in their homes at Christmas? All of this feeling over a coat? (Daily Beast was even more dramatic) At no time did the thought ever cross the author’s mind that perhaps the First Lady gets cold in that drafty old house? Or maybe she just likes coats?
Impossible, says WaPo. It’s her own personal border wall:
The coat tossed over the shoulders is a generic styling maneuver. It’s often used in editorial photographs so that a model can show off the entirety of an ensemble, including what’s underneath the coat, because all of it has been thoughtfully coordinated. But even the most devoted fashion stylist realizes that at a certain point, when aesthetics start to overwhelm logic, when a flourish becomes a cliche, it’s time to retire it. For Trump, the cliche seems to be a crutch — a way of not having to be fully present.
“When aesthetics start to overwhelm logic,” yes, it overwhelms logic to wear a coat in D.C. in the winter.
It gets even more hateful as you go on:
Over the weekend, she had tweeted that volunteers were “hard at work” decorating the “People’s House” and that she looked forward to viewing their handiwork when she returned to Washington. And when she did get a peek at it — one that was for public consumption — she had the look of someone who had swooped in on the way from here to there.
Because Michelle Obama apparently handmade every ornament on every tree in the White House that she chopped down herself? This is petty. I’m actually shocked that an editor looked at this and thought “Yes, yes, this is just the quality content we’re looking for here at the Washington Post.” If the author was assigned this specific topic I think a trip to HR is in order.
You knew this was going to come up:
Trump is keen on coats. In 2018, she used the graffiti on the back of a Zara coat to deliver the fashion equivalent of machine gunfire to all who caught a glimpse of it when she made a trip to visit detained migrant children: “I Really Don’t Care. Do U?”
Move over MAGA hat, the coat is the new trendy symbol of hate.
But as both a host and a guest, her attire would be less attention-grabbing if she took off her coat and indicated that she was happy to stay a while.
Written while impeachment is the rage du jour.
Seriously though, this could have been a fun piece but it sank to easily into pettiness and mean-spiritedness. We don’t even extend grace to the First Lady’s outerwear in the winter, but heaven forbid, Trump’s Tweeeeets.
