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There were a handful of stories that seemed to most rattle America following Donald Trump’s second inauguration and first day back in office. There were the executive orders. There were the across-the-board pardons of Jan. 6 defendants. There was how Elon Musk, uh, decided to mark the occasion. And then there was Melania Trump’s hat.
You may not like that these moments sparked roughly similar jolts of speculation and frenzied chatter online, but that is the new Trumpworld—and in Melania’s case, there’s no quibbling to be done about her intentions. Rather than blend into the background, as you might expect from someone who’s only planning on doing the job part time, Melania made a bold statement, and she mostly made it via a navy blue wide-brimmed hat that obscured her eyes and at one pointed thwarted her husband’s ill-fated attempt to kiss her.
The hat quickly inspired a slew of comparisons: I saw people liken the first lady to a pilgrim, Zorro, the Hamburglar, the spy from Mad magazine’s Spy vs. Spy, and even Jim Carrey in The Mask. Most of these aren’t exactly flattering; I also thought of the Madeline children’s books about the little French girl, for what it’s worth—she’s chic, at least, right?
What all of these references have in common is that they’re the stuff of costumes: Americans can’t really be trusted to interpret a hat, or take it seriously as anything but a silly getup. And so any hat Melania wore put her at risk for turning into the next Pharrell meme. But Melania has a penchant for hats nevertheless, as the Washington Post has pointed out. Defiance is a theme here: You may recall that Melania has long sought to remind us with her fashions that she doesn’t care what we think of her.
It all painted quite a different picture than Melania’s first Inauguration Day look, in 2017. Then, she was going for a pastel Jackie Kennedy thing, simple, sweet, and very femme, but that’s gone now, traded in for something more severe that’s less pitched toward earning praise and admiration. If you were one of the thousands of people to watch that video clip of President Trump attempting to kiss her and failing, blocked by the hat’s wide brim, that only served to reinforce the fortress-like quality of the ensemble.
At last week’s funeral for President Jimmy Carter, too, Melania’s outfit seemed to take a turn toward matronly. Maybe Madeline isn’t the proper reference point, but instead the nuns that lead her around? It’s not that Melania was ever thought of as particularly nice, but the message now feels like it’s edging toward “No more Ms. Nice First Lady.” Between her $40 million Amazon “documentary” and her lucrative new crypto scheme, Melania has finally learned a thing or two from her husband about making the most of the moment, and the blue-hat moat she created around herself on Monday shows her in full adversary mode, with not only the media but really with anyone who might want to look in at her. We’ve come a long way from “I Really Don’t Care, Do U?”—we’ve arrived at “You Can All Go Directly to Hell.”
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