The first lady, Melania Trump, presented her black and white 2025 inaugural dress to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History on Friday morning, saying it demonstrated “America’s pure spirit of originality, superior engineering and boundless creativity.”
During a brief and proper event Friday morning at the museum, the dress joined an exhibit of gowns of first ladies dating back to Helen Taft in 1909. Normally the museum collects dresses worn during a president’s first inauguration. But because President Trump was elected to non-consecutive terms, Mrs. Trump will have two dresses in the collection.
Standing a few feet away from her latest inaugural dress, Mrs. Trump, wearing a black jacket and knee-high boots, made brief comments about how high fashion reflected humanity.
“This is not a dress,” she said, describing it instead as a reflection of “over 50 years of training, experience and wisdom, realized with every thread, every stitch, every sharp edge.”
The Z-shape on the front of the dress, she added, symbolized “decades of my early memories, life experiences and influences.”
The addition of Mrs. Trump’s second dress comes amid a self-promotional blitz, including for her self-produced documentary “Melania,” which premiered late last month after Amazon bought and marketed it for $75 million.
Mrs. Trump’s husband has also been working to make a bigger splash at the capital’s museums.
This month, the White House proposed that the Smithsonian add a special Trump display. In early January, the administration increased pressure on the institution to comply with an executive order calling on the Smithsonian to put a more positive spin on American history. Federal officials purge museum contents for ‘inappropriate ideology’.
The event at the National Museum of American History stayed out of politics. At one point, Anthea M. Hartig, the museum’s director, mentioned several state first ladies in the audience, an acknowledgment that coincided with a meeting Trump held with governors at the White House a few blocks away.
Mrs. Trump, a Slovenian-born former model, has made waves with her fashion choices since Trump’s first inauguration in 2017, when she wore an “America First” inaugural wardrobe.
During Trump’s second swearing-in ceremony, she turned heads when she failed to remove her wide-brimmed hat, making it difficult for the president to kiss her cheek.
At the end of the ceremony on Friday, the dress, along with a replica of the diamond brooch she wore, tied to a black ribbon as a choker, was wheeled upstairs to the exhibition space. There, the dress joined Mary Todd Lincoln’s purple velvet ensemble and Jacqueline Kennedy’s yellow state dinner dress. Mrs. Trump’s 2017 inaugural dress was already in place.
“Each first lady reflects the era in which she served,” said Lonnie G. Bunch III, secretary of the Smithsonian. “Essentially, every dress we have is a window into America.”
Addressing that theme, Mrs. Trump said her dress “expresses a clear point of view: a modern silhouette, bold and dignified, and brutally chic.”
