WASHINGTON — In the end, she checked every box.
Elegant, unexpected dress? Check. Unknown designer elevated to overnight sensation? Check. New York brand? Check. Implicit message about cooperation and embracing the melting pot? Check.
When
Melania Trump took the stage with her husband, President Trump, on Friday night for the inaugural balls, she demonstrated that, while she may have been out of the spotlight since the election, she hasn’t been sticking her head in the sand. She has been closely studying the vernacular of first lady dress.
In an architectural off-the-shoulder white crepe column with a thin burgundy ribbon as a belt, a high slit and a gazar wave curving from sleeve to hip and then down the skirt, she looked — especially when compared with the younger generation of Trump women, most of whom opted for gold-tinged sparkling princess gowns — understated and adult. Not remotely mired in the 1980s, though her husband’s look and rhetoric may be.
And despite rampant speculation about the designer behind the dress, she cannily managed to surprise the entire fashion world.
The gown was, according to a statement from her office, a “collaboration” between Mrs. Trump and the designer Hervé Pierre, a Frenchman who moved to New York in the early 1990s and eventually became creative director of Carolina Herrera, where he and Mrs. Trump met and where he worked on clothes for Laura Bush and Michelle Obama, though largely behind the scenes. He left that post last February. This is his first major dress under his own name (he does not yet have a full-fledged collection in that context).