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‘Money does not whisper – it shouts’: how Trump 2.0 ushered in a brutish new era of power dressing

In the president’s second term, it’s out with the quiet decorum of the Bidens and in with loud American bling. What do the big hair, vulgar slogans and expensive logos promise for the future?

The Fox News contributor Kellyanne Conway and Megyn Kelly, the conservative podcaster who described Trump’s return to the White House as “an instant utopia”, are the frontwomen for a vision of femininity rooted in the California blondes of Sweet Valley High teen fiction. For the inauguration, Ivanka Trump, the most fluent fashion speaker of the tribe, wore a forest-green skirt suit inspired by a 1950 Dior collection, followed by an evening gown modelled on one made by Hubert de Givenchy for Audrey Hepburn in the 1954 film Sabrina. The rise of the tradwife aesthetic – a gen Z social media trend for young women to play idealised housewives, cooking elaborate meals for broods of adorable children without ever chipping a nail, getting jam on a white poplin prairie dress or letting a smile drop – suggests this retrograde cosplay may have cross-generational appeal.

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