Style Memo from The Washington Post

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News from the front lines of culture.

(Tom Brenner for The Washington Post)

Inauguration roundup

By Shane O’Neill

Wait, did you know that Donald Trump’s second inauguration happened exactly 40 years after Ronald Reagan’s second inauguration?

I didn’t! Until I read Rachel Tashjian’s analysis of the styles swirling Washington during inaugural festivities this week.

Tashjian drew this distinction between the prevailing style of Reagan’s era vs. Trump’s:

Monday’s looks were largely devoid of glamour. There was no whimsy. Reagan embraced both, and humor is always a route to unity, and combined with glamour, can be very approachable. For the Trump women, this was a show of stodgy, unmoving strength, with the precision of their clothes working almost like a shield or a hard, conservative shell. They put the fashion in old-fashioned.

“	This was an opportunity for unity through clothing that was largely unrealized.”
- Rachel Tashjian on how Washington dressed for the inauguration.

(Aristide Economopoulos)

I hadn’t really thought of it that way: “Devoid of glamour and whimsy.” Wait wait wait. What about John Fetterman’s shorts? What about Lauren Sánchez’s decision to wear a lacy top under her blazer? Was that whimsy? It was certainly something.

Ashley Fetters Maloy and Maura Judkis discuss these and other memorable looks here.

At the Liberty Inaugural Ball, Melania Trump wore a gown by Hervé Pierre (above) that Tashjian described as “a white column dress with a black ribbon that zigzagged with an aggressive awkwardness up the front and back.”

(Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

Usha Vance wore Reem Acra. Tiffany Trump wore Zuhair Murad. She didn’t get as much attention as her sister Ivanka Trump in Oscar de la Renta. Some things never change!

But some things do. As Tashjian wrote: “Just a few months ago, it was a struggle to get designers to confirm that they had even made pieces worn by Melania Trump.” No longer. This week there were press releases, public statements and behind-the-scenes Instagram videos for women celebrating Trump’s inauguration.

What does this mean for the fashion industry? Anna Wintour and Council of Fashion Designers of America CEO Steven Kolb both offered measured quotes that basically said that fashion is a business and businesses run on money.

To quote the chanting that our reporter Jesús Rodriguez heard in the streets on Monday, “U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!”

Rodriguez covered the die-hard Trump fans who flocked to D.C. this week. “I’ve never felt anything like that for another human being,” said one woman who had traveled to D.C. from Greenwich, Connecticut. “The birth of my child — maybe.”

(Aristide Economopoulos for The Washington Post)

If you skipped the inauguration parties in D.C., here’s what you missed:

A photo op where you could pretend to be Donald Trump pretending to work at McDonald’s (above). Melania’s Hamburglar-looking hat and Jill Biden’s head-to-toe Grimace purple ensemble both would have fit right in. Bipartisanship in McDonaldland!
Billy Ray Cyrus singing “Achy Breaky Heart” without a backing track. Jewel singing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” a cappella. Carrie Underwood also had to sing unaccompanied after technical difficulties at the inauguration. MAGA stars! They’re just like each other!
Jon Voight staring into your soul (below).

(Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

Ope! Almost forgot!

At a parade event, Elon Musk gave a Nazi salute.

Sorry, sorry, to be more precise: Musk gave what looked to me to be a Nazi salute. Twice. Then he said, “My heart goes out to you.”

Was it a Nazi salute? You can decide for yourself. (Musk didn’t explicitly deny the claim in social media posts, but criticized people pointing it out.) Some neo-Nazis seemed to think it was. I’d think they would know.

From a Washington Post story about the incident:

Some cited Musk’s propensity for promoting antisemitic language and conspiracy theories on his highly trafficked X account. Others looked to videos and images of the movement for answers. “That was a Nazi salute,” Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a history professor at New York University who studies fascism, said on X, “and a very belligerent one too.”