Yahoo Lifestyle Melania Trump Dresses Down With Levi’s for North Carolina and Los Angeles Trip
“Know your audience” are words to live by for any political figure, and that mantra applies, too, to what they choose to wear for public outings.
After wearing a bevy of designer labels during the Inaugural weekend, First Lady Melania Trump headed for California in a considerably more relatable outfit. The former model was photographed leaving the White House wearing a black watch cap, an olive green hooded Rag & Bone puffer jacket, black Levi’s jeans and Xappeal black lace-up boots. While some critics were still debating why Melania Trump wore a wide-brimmed Eric Javits hat with her Adam Lippes-designed navy silk wool crepe suit for her husband’s swearing-in ceremony, FLOTUS sported a different form of deflection Friday — wearing a pair of gold-rimmed sunglasses before departing from Joint Base Andrews. (The shades were said to be from Victoria Beckham not Ray-Ban’s “Aviator” style, which former President Joe Biden favored.)
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The dressed-down look was suitable, given that they were headed to North Carolina, a state that had reportedly faced $60 billion in damages caused by Hurricane Helene. The second stop on the Trumps’ tour Friday would be California, where the total amount of damage and economic loss is upward of $250 billion, according to a new Accuweather report.
While Melania Trump noticeably toned down her dress code Friday, another first lady was known to never go that route. The former first lady Imelda Marcos, once declared, “Never dress down for the poor. They won’t respect you for it. They want their first lady to look like a million dollars,” according to Beatriz Romualdez Francia’s book “Imelda: A Story of the Philippines.” (Marcos wasn’t just a clotheshorse, she also was said to have owned 3,000 pairs of shoes.)
Choosing the right footwear matters, too, for first ladies, as Donald Trump made clear Monday, by stating publicly that his wife’s feet “hurt,” during the presidential parade. Manolo Blahnik 5-inch stilettos are usually her go-to kicks for major photo ops. In 2017, Michelle Obama learned a different lesson in choosing the right shoes. The former first lady faced some criticism for wearing $540 Lanvin sneakers for a visit to a Washington, D.C. food bank.
But back to the Trumps. Upon landing in Asheville, N.C. and being briefed about the recovery efforts for Hurricane Helene, President Trump and the first lady planned to meet with displaced families in Swannanoa, N.C. The unincorporated community of approximately 5,000 residents was severely damaged. The Asheville Christian Academy there had between $11 million and $15 million worth of damage. State officials reportedly pegged the total of the hurricane’s damage for western North Carolina public schools to be about $85 million.
For the second part of the day, the Trumps were bound for California, where the president was to be briefed about the Pacific Palisades. While the media has covered how celebrities like Paris Hilton, Mel Gibson and Anthony Hopkins lost their homes in the fires, nearly 15,900 residential properties were within the designated fire boundaries of the Palisades and Eaton Fires, with a total value of $40.3 billion. And the median value of a home inside the Palisades Fire zone was $3 million, according to a new Realtor.com report.
After an evening briefing about the Los Angeles fires, the Trumps planned to wing it to Las Vegas for an overnighter at the Trump International Hotel.
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