What does the new “golden age” look like, as President Donald J. Trump repeatedly declared in his inaugural speeches was about to arrive?
For a preview, watch the trio of official inaugural balls being held Monday evening. They were the real-life equivalent of a trailer for a remake of “The Gilded Age”: a series of champagne celebrations that featured the main characters in glittering costumes reminiscent of a bygone era to create a pastiche of ambition. One to the tune of Frank Sinatra’s ‘My Way’.
If members of the Trump and Vance families weren’t exactly wearing 24-karat dresses, they were at least wearing jewel tones.
Melania Trump, for example, offered a modern update to the classic column, thanks to a collaboration with Hervé Pierre, the designer and stylist with whom she has worked since the first Trump inauguration, and whose dress this time bore a remarkable similarity to her 2017 clothes. robe.
For Trump 1.0, she wore an off-the-shoulder white gazar dress of his design, with a single ruffle that followed a curve down her body. For 2.0, it was a strapless, pearl-colored crepe dress with a black ribbon that traced an art deco swirl down her body—along with a turn-of-the-century black choker, fastened with a diamond pin. As a whole, it was elegantly reminiscent of the Parthenon, Erté and a question mark, all at the same time.
Ivanka Trump, also in black and white, channeled Audrey Hepburn in the 1954 cinematic love story “Sabrina.” Her dress was courtesy of Givenchy, the LVMH fashion house, whose CEO, Bernard Arnault, attended the inauguration (and last was the richest man in the world for a while).
Givenchy has recreated for Mrs. Trump the famous white sleeveless organdy ball gown with black embroidery that Hepburn wore in the film, complete with a floaty, bustling overskirt. She wore it with opera-length black gloves, suggesting that when it comes to fashion, life can truly imitate art. (And that Mrs. Trump, like so many, is a Hepburn fan, especially when it comes to style.) She looked beautiful, in a cosplay kind of way.
And speaking of bustle, there was another on Lara Trump’s strapless carnelian dress, which matched the gemstones around her neck. There were more happy endings embedded in the sapphire beads of Usha Vance’s mermaid-esque Reem Acra look (adapted from one currently in the designer’s collection) and the elaborately embroidered princess bodice of Tiffany Trump’s sheer gown.
Still, none was better than Kai Trump, the 17-year-old daughter of Donald Trump Jr., who accompanied her father and happily posted on Instagram over her silver crystal-covered Sherri Hill number, which featured a cutout at the bodice and a mid-thigh slit.
In other words, when the extended Trump family took the stage at the Liberty Ball (where Billy Ray Cyrus appeared in denim with no dress code and a cowboy hat with a multicolored scarf draped around his neck), they offered cradle notes for a sartorial tour of the iconography of celluloid Americana – the silver screen, Disney, Vegas, the robber barons – filtered through a reality TV lens.
A taste of the… well, flavor that will define the next four years. So baffled that at this point no one spoke of the festering division and discontent that ended the first Gilded Age.
