How the Right Wing Weaponized Clothing

Donald Trump’s election in 2016 caused various whiplashed industries and groups to shudder in their own unique ways. Maybe art will be better, the art world said; maybe satire will return, SNL watchers gamely suggested. Within the fashion world, the commencement of the Trump administration seemed to mark the end of a golden era that spanned the Obama administration. Fashion designers have always had friends in the White House: Jackie had Oleg Cassini, Nancy Reagan worked with James Galanos, and Hillary Clinton had Oscar de la Renta. These designers weren’t strictly partisan, either: de la Renta dressed Secretary Clinton and Laura Bush. By 2016, Michelle Obama had turned a transactional arrangement into something more like a symbolic special relationship. She famously championed American designers—most notably the now-sputtering mall staple J. Crew and the upscale Asian-American designer Jason Wu—helping to cultivate a new kind of respect for the art and business of American fashion.

But even though Ivanka Trump had friends in the industry, the Trumps were polarizing from the beginning, jeopardizing the runway-to-White House pipeline. In the months following the election, it became something of a parlor game to ask designers whether they would dress the Trumps. (You may recall a kerfuffle over a made up Tom Ford quote.) Ultimately, the question was moot. The Trumps were like fashion kryptonite: although Melania and Ivanka both wore designer clothes, and Ivanka and Jared reportedly had Camelot aspirations, they would, like Mrs. Dalloway and her flowers, have to buy the clothes themselves. Clothes in the White House still spoke volumes, though the message shifted from “Support American designers” to “I don’t care, do u.”

But with Trump’s presidency (seemingly) nearing its end, we can see that clothing actually didn’t diminish in importance—in fact, over the past four years, its importance, and its impact, have grown to chilling proportions. Some of the most disturbing early images of the attempted coup at the Capitol last week were striking because of the clothing depicted in them: men shirtless, their faces painted as if for a war game or just war, with animal pelts on their head and backs; sweatshirts that appeared to be “merch” for Auschwitz concentration camps. Later, images of rioters in Yeezy and Patagonia suggested that this wasn't just a freak show, and that supposedly upstanding middle-class Republicans were part of the insurrection coalition, too. Clothing provided one of the earliest signs that this was no random riot: several insurrectionists were seen in clothing designed specially for the event. Echoing a tactic used last summer during the social justice protests against police brutality, the FBI is reportedly using those images of graphic T-shirts and sweatshirts to identify the rioters. Over the past week, sites like Teespring and Shopify have suddenly joined debates about free speech and content moderation typically left to social media platforms, ferreting out potential right wing terrorists who are selling—and buying—antisemetic, racist, and otherwise inflammatory merchandise.

And it wasn’t just the rioters and media paying attention to the clothing on display: the president, ensconced in front of the television, presumably in one of the oversized suits that helped mold his image as billionaire thug, reportedly said that the protests offended him on aesthetic grounds. Real patriots, the implication being, wear Brioni.

Trump has been our first—and, god willing, our last—looks-first president. Indeed, he is a looks-only president, fond of describing appointees as “straight out of central casting.” He launched his presidential campaign with a hat, which quickly became an abhorrent symbol of white supremacy. He surrounded himself with an army of blondes. Female Trump supporters, peppered throughout right-wing media and his own administration, borrowed more from the Real Housewives playbook than the governmental aide one. One of Trump’s closest consiglieres, Roger Stone, maintains a fanatical obsession with obscure tailoring rules and styles.

Meanwhile, Melania, provocatively silent and rarely seen, engaged in a fashion tete-a-tete with the world. Was her pussy blouse a pun? Was her graphic jacket a middle finger to the haters? With so little information coming from the press-averse White House, her clothing became a cipher, puzzle pieces that rarely fit together. Ivanka, meanwhile, kept her wardrobe of New York designers who dressed previous political spouses, like Oscar de la Renta and Carolina Herrera, as if nothing had changed from one administration to the next. There was no uniform for the Trump administration, as there has long been for previous ones; instead, the unifying principle was to dress for the job you want, because dressing for it was often the whole job.

The lack of a uniform among Trump’s followers initially suggested a disorder that made the events of last Wednesday easy enough to mock. (I didn’t see any Fred Perry-sporting Proud Boys, as we did at protests early in the Trump years.) But the very lack of uniformity makes the reality all the more frightening. A T-shirt or a hoodie lasts longer than a speech—it’s like a tweet for your body—and has over the past year, in particular, become a way for people to say what they feel they can’t, or shouldn’t. You can’t mute a graphic, after all.

What will happen over the next four years? Kamala Harris is rumored to be working with stylist Karla Welch, WWD reported this weekend, and speculation is also circulating that she may commit to wearing only American designers, in a return to Obama-era tradition. (Welch works with the marvelous Tracee Ellis Ross, with whom she has primarily zeroed in on a roster of Black designers.) Jill Biden already has relationships with young and establishment American designers, which will allow fashion to turn back the clock a bit.

But the merch will remain, even after Trump is gone and even if he is impeached. Indeed, the graphic tees and slogan hoodies will likely multiply if he is, and one imagines that his post-presidency efforts will include an attempt to outdo his first fashion triumph, the MAGA hat. Fashion may be cyclical, but a T-shirt is forever.

Originally Appeared on GQ