What does the new “golden age,” the one President Donald J. Trump declared again and again in his inaugural speeches was about to dawn, look like?
For a preview, cast your eye to the trio of official inaugural balls held on Monday night. They were the real-life equivalent of a trailer for a remake of “The Gilded Age”: a series of champagne celebrations in which the main characters took center stage in glittering costumes that called to mind eras gone by to create a pastiche of aspiration. One set to the tune of Frank Sinatra’s “My Way.”
If members of the Trump and Vance families weren’t exactly wearing 24-karat frocks, they were at least wearing jewel tones.
Melania Trump, for example, offered a modern update to the classic column, courtesy of 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 notable resemblance to her 2017 gown.
For Trump 1.0, she wore an off-the-shoulder white gazar dress of his design with a single ruffle tracing a curve down her body. For 2.0, it was a strapless, pearl-toned, crepe dress with a black ribbon tracing an Art Deco squiggle down her body — along with a very turn-of-the-century black choker affixed with a diamond pin. As a whole, it elegantly called to mind the Parthenon, Erté and a question mark, all at once.