First lady Melania Trump spoke at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History in Washington D.C. this morning as her second inaugural gown from the 2025 inauguration, was being added to the museum’s collection and displayed at the First Ladies gallery. (Yes, it’s the gown you may be thinking of, particularly if you saw her documentary Melania: the white one with the black squiggly line.)
Onstage, Trump spoke of the gown and its designer—her longtime stylist, the French-American fashion designer Hervé Pierre—and of her commitment to fashion and her passion for it altogether. One of her most enduring signatures as a first lady will after all be her meticulously architected look and her personal fascination with it: Towering stilettos, severely cut skirt suits, and her penchant for black, in addition to her love for European fashion houses.
Trump, according to Lonnie G. Bunch III, the current secretary of the Smithsonian who spoke prior to her remarks, is the first first lady to be exhibited and represented in the collection with two inaugural gowns in more than 100 years. “That’s really important,” said Bunch.
“Human nature resides in the discipline of detail. Everything is in the detail,” Trump said in her speech. “It’s a testament as to why America’s fashion industry can lead the rest of the world,” she continued. Notably, she “championed” the United States’s “fashion leadership,” to borrow the verbiage from the release of remarks, while wearing not one but two European labels, as confirmed by the office of the first lady. It’s a detail that seems worth paying attention to.
It sends a message: that either Trump does not seem to think it relevant that she was wearing a Bottega Veneta coat (Italian, retailing online for $4,300) with Christian Louboutin (French) snakeskin boots while speaking of how the American industry is leading the pack, or perhaps she simply hadn’t thought of it. Though considering how carefully articulated her style is, we can presume that the first lady knows exactly what she’s wearing and to where.
President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump arrive to the Commander-In-Chief inaugural ball at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, DC, on January 20, 2025. (Photo by Jabin Botsford /The Washington Post via Getty Images)The Washington Post/Getty Images