America’s fashion designers are waging a war on Melania Trump

As tradition dictates, the gown worn by the First Lady to the President’s inauguration ball will, once it has finished being eyeballed, eventually wind its way to Washington’s Smithsonian museum, to be preserved as part of history.

Since the precedent was set in 1912 by Helen Taft, wife of the 27th US president William Howard Taft, more than 35 gowns have taken up residence in the museum’s First Ladies Collection (including a dress from the first ever First Lady, Martha Washington, dating back to the 1780s).

Others featured include those worn by Eleanor Roosevelt, Jacqueline Kennedy, Nancy Reagan, Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama.

Soon, they will be joined by the graphic black-and-white gown worn by Melania Trump – her second entry into the canon, and an undeniable coup for the designer whose creative talents she showcased on a global stage.

Did Melania choose her beloved Dior? Or, in a bid to be patriotic, perhaps a high-profile American label such as Oscar de la Renta, or a lesser-known name whose career she could boost, in an echo of Michelle Obama’s 2009 choice of Jason Wu?

Melania’s pick was certainly lesser-known. Step forward Herve Pierre Braillard, who designs under the name Herve Pierre.

Pierre, 59, once worked at Balmain, Oscar de la Renta and Carolina Herrera, but has been focused on overseeing Melania’s wardrobe since she first entered the White House in 2017, and was retained as her stylist and wardrobe adviser after she left it.

Having designed her first inauguration ballgown in 2017, it’s a mark of Melania’s trust in, and loyalty towards, Pierre that she should turn to him again. But it’s also a mark of Melania’s standing in the fashion industry.

Where most designers would consider dressing the First Lady a coup, when it’s Melania, many consider it a catastrophe.

Given that Melania, 54, is a former model who once featured on the cover of American Vogue (before she became First Lady), it’s clear that the problem lies less with how she looks in a dress than with her husband’s politics.

Tom Ford, Marc Jacobs, Zac Posen and Jason Wu are some of the designers who have been vocal in refusing to dress her, either due to their political views or because they’re fearful of the same backlash that faced Stefano Gabbana in 2017.

After Gabbana thanked Melania for wearing a Dolce & Gabbana tuxedo jacket, there were widespread calls to boycott the brand.

But while some designers have made their feelings clear, others have remained peculiarly silent. No brand has a more perplexing stance than Dior, a firm favourite of Melania’s.

She has chosen its tailoring on several prominent occasions, wearing a red suit at the Republican National Convention last July, and a grey version on the night of her husband’s election victory in November.

Usually, when a celebrity or notable person wears a brand, the press office quickly sends a gushing press release by way of confirmation. But Dior was silent.

Relationships with Trump’s daughter Ivanka are only slightly better. It took Dior more than 24 hours to own her inauguration outfit, finally writing “Ivanka Kushner wore a Dior Haute Couture green cashmere jacket and skirt, inspired by the design Favori AH1950 of Monsieur Dior.

She also wore a Dior hat, a small black leather Lady Dior bag, black leather gloves, belt and shoes”.

Likewise, the provenance of Ivanka’s Givenchy inauguration gown – a recreation of the same 1954 haute couture silhouette that Hubert de Givenchy created for Audrey Hepburn for the film Sabrina – was confirmed by a press release from the White House, as opposed to an official press release by Givenchy itself.

A White House representative said that Ivanka was “honoured” to wear the gown and “incredibly grateful (to the) Arnault family and the Givenchy atelier for creating this masterpiece, capturing the original artistry and elegance with remarkable precision and craftsmanship”.

“Audrey Hepburn has long been a personal inspiration to Ivanka,” they added.

The distancing and delay would, perhaps, be understandable if Dior’s owner, Bernard Arnault, was a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat keen to minimise any association with Donald Trump.

But this is far from the case. So close are the Arnaults to the Trumps that senior members of the family – Arnault himself, Arnault’s wife Helene Mercier, their son Alexandre and Arnault’s daughter and Dior CEO Delphine – were not only at the inauguration, but on the podium.

As the owner of Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton (LVMH), the most powerful luxury empire in fashion, Arnault is the richest person in France, with an estimated net worth of about $295 billion.

His wealth unquestionably bought him the same privilege as the tech billionaires who also shared the podium – Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg among them.

Whatever his feelings about Trump, Arnault is a businessman, and it greatly behoves him to be on cordial terms with a president who caused LVMH to lose an estimated $2.5b in one day alone in 2019, after Trump imposed stiff tariffs.

Any European label would agree that US trade barriers are destined to have a far more punishing effect on sales than Melania Trump wearing one of their jackets.

In the case of Dior, rather than being a political statement, its press office’s silence over Melania could just as likely indicate that she bought her Dior suits herself. Her stylist Pierre has admitted that 95 per cent of her clothes were purchased off the peg, rather than being lent or gifted.

Although even the act of purchasing them can be problematic, with Pierre telling industry bible Women’s Wear Daily that he was once refused entry to a Madison Avenue shop (he declined to name which) because the brand in question didn’t want its designs to be worn by Melania.

The rift between Melania and the fashion industry clearly remains, with a near-blanket refusal to partner with the First Lady.

It is unlikely, for example, that Mrs Trump will surface in the front rows of New York fashion week next month, because the optics wouldn’t look good for the designers.

So perhaps it’s little wonder Melania showed loyalty to her trusty Pierre by wearing one of his own designs to her husband’s inauguration ball.

In the last six months of 2023, it’s estimated that he was paid more than $160,000 from Donald Trump’s political action committee for his services – a modest fee, given his experience (past clients include Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama) and level of responsibility.

“If people don’t want to dress her, I think it’s sad, but I was honoured,” Pierre has said. “The beauty of this country is it’s a democracy, so some people want to dress certain people and some people don’t want to. I choose to.”

Whether more designers decide to dress Melania this time around remains to be seen.

There certainly seems to be no thawing of relations between the Trumps and American Vogue. During Trump’s last stint in office, Melania was snubbed by Anna Wintour, its powerful British editor-in-chief and a proud Democrat, despite the editor having featured every other First Lady in the magazine, including Republican Laura Bush.

Nor does her editorial stance seem to have softened. Yesterday, Vogue ran an article that criticised Ivanka Trump’s choice of the Hollywood-inspired Givenchy gown: “Trump’s wardrobe appears to be built on artifice,” it noted rather sourly, adding that “her nod to upbeat Hollywood glamour … felt misguided”.

If Melania’s rejection by the fashion industry rankles, we’ll never know it.

She has already proved that necessity is the mother of invention, wearing items from her own wardrobe and making them look current – even when they’re several years old.

With the help of Pierre, she has carved out a classic yet contemporary look that focuses on clean lines and elegant silhouettes which enhance her figure.

And on the days when her banishment from fashion’s inner circle stings? She has a pair of Jackie O-inspired sunglasses for that – or, failing those, a hat.

Whether with or without the fashion world’s blessing, bar the odd misstep, Melania knows how to dress. Let them weaponise their politics. Whether certain designers give her their blessing or not, she’ll continue to weaponise their clothes.