The age of Donald Trump is an assault on the senses. There is a brutish grandeur to a president who, in his heavy, shoulder-padded Brioni suits, looks like a buffalo painted by Holbein. Geopolitics has been warped into a Lord of the Flies fever dream, presided over by a bronze face-painted playground bully. Bedazzled cowboy hats and Maga caps, YMCA and raised fists, speak of a culture with the volume dial turned up. Just as power has been cut free from responsibility, so has prestige been unchained from taste. Trump 2.0 feels like a Space Mountain ride with no safety bar – and it is just getting started.
Fashion speaks loudly in this new world. Two weeks into the second Trump term, power dressing already has a new look. Out with the careful patrician decorum of the Bidens, in with a novel era of American bling. The cultured metropolitan allure of the Obamas is a distant memory, overlaid with bright lights, big hair, vulgar slogans and expensive logos. Elon Musk’s preposterous flight jacket. Melania Trump’s strange hat. Lauren Sánchez’s inauguration-day lingerie. It is, as the kids say, a lot.
