As is her tendency, previous and future First Woman Melania Trump made an eye catching trend assertion at Thursday’s state funeral for former President Jimmy Carter.
The brilliant-white, Peter Pan-style collar on Melania Trump’s black Valentino trench coat stood out, as she sat on the far finish of the second row along with her husband, Donald Trump, amid a sea of somber, black apparel donned by the opposite presidential and vice presidential VIPs and their companions.
It additionally was instantly obvious Melania Trump’s collar featured a dramatic black and white print. Girls’s Put on Each day jumped in to clarify that the print depicts a pair in a passionate embrace and surrounded by roses and butterflies.
Girls’s Put on Each day mentioned the “rose-kiss” print was included into a number of items in Valentino’s fall 2019 assortment.
Throughout her husband’s first time period in workplace, Melania Trump developed a popularity for her generally splashy trend selections that her followers beloved however that her critics noticed as extravagant and even “unbecoming of her office.”
For instance, whereas accompanying her husband to the G7 summit in Sicily in 2017, she donned an elaborate floral coat from the style home Dolce and Gabana, that reportedly retailed for $51,000. On the time, USA Right this moment reported that $51,000 was the equal of a median American’s family earnings.
Most notoriously, Melania Trump selected to put on a $39 khaki-colored Zara jacket, as she traveled to Texas to go to a shelter for undocumented immigrant kids amid the outcry over her husband’s household separation coverage. On the again of the jacket had been scrawled the phrases, “I REALLY DON’T CARE, DO U?”
The jacket touched off a firestorm of questions on whether or not Melania Trump, an immigrant herself, was being insensitive, and even callous, to the plight of kids separated from their mother and father whereas attempting to cross the U.S. border.
In her 2024 memoir, Melania Trump took credit score for getting her husband to finish his hardline household separation coverage, whereas defending her option to put on the controversial jacket.
The primary woman mentioned she wore the jacket to ship a message to the media over its use of anonymous-sourced reporting. She wrote that she was decided to not let “the media’s false narratives affect my mission to help the children and families at the border.”
After all, Melania Trump’s “rose-kiss print” collar most likely received’t be seen as all that controversial. However it definitely was attention-getting, at the same time as she sat, trying glum, on the far finish of the second row.
Nearer to the middle of that row had been her husband and 4 different residing presidents, Barack Obama, George H.W. Bush and Invoice Clinton, together with their wives, Laura Bush and Hillary Clinton. Michelle Obama didn’t attend the service, with the New York Occasions saying that she was in Hawaii and “had a scheduling conflict.”
Earlier than the funeral started, photographs present Melania Trump trying a bit disconnected from the group, as her husband turned from her to speak up Obama, his White Home predecessor. Maybe, she was eager about how she’ll formally be again on middle stage as first woman on Jan. 20, when her husband is once more sworn in as president.
The New York Occasions reported that Trump was speaking “almost nonstop” to Obama, with the dialog seeming to be “mostly one-sided,” with Obama listening and responding with shorter solutions.
President Joe Biden sat within the entrance row, along with his spouse, Jill Biden, and Vice President Kamala Harris and Harris’s husband, Doug Emhoff.
The Occasions mentioned that Harris, who misplaced the bitterly fought Nov. 5 election to Trump, didn’t shake Trump’s hand once they arrived on the cathedral. Following the service, Emhoff shook Trump’s hand however Harris didn’t.
On the service, Biden eulogized Carter as a “practitioner of good works,” whereas the Carter’s grandson, Jason, remembered his grandfather as a president who “led this nation with love and respect.”
