As is her tendency, past and future First Lady Melania Trump made an eye-catching fashion statement at Thursday’s state funeral for former President Jimmy Carter.
The bright-white, Peter Pan-style collar on Melania Trump’s black Valentino trench coat stood out, as she sat at the far end of the second row with her husband, Donald Trump, amid a sea of somber, black attire donned by the other presidential and vice presidential VIPs and their partners.
It also was immediately apparent Melania Trump’s collar featured a dramatic black and white print. Women’s Wear Daily jumped in to explain that the print depicts a couple in a passionate embrace and surrounded by roses and butterflies.
Women’s Wear Daily said the “rose-kiss” print was incorporated into multiple pieces in Valentino’s fall 2019 collection.
During her husband’s first term in office, Melania Trump developed a reputation for her sometimes splashy fashion choices that her fans loved but that her critics saw as extravagant or even “unbecoming of her office.”
For example, while accompanying her husband to the G7 summit in Sicily in 2017, she donned an elaborate floral coat from the fashion house Dolce and Gabana, that reportedly retailed for $51,000. At the time, USA Today reported that $51,000 was the equivalent of an average American’s household income.
Most notoriously, Melania Trump chose to wear a $39 khaki-colored Zara jacket, as she traveled to Texas to visit a shelter for undocumented immigrant children amid the outcry over her husband’s family separation policy. On the back of the jacket were scrawled the words, “I REALLY DON’T CARE, DO U?”
The jacket touched off a firestorm of questions about whether Melania Trump, an immigrant herself, was being insensitive, or even callous, to the plight of children separated from their parents while trying to cross the U.S. border.
In her 2024 memoir, Melania Trump took credit for getting her husband to end his hardline family separation policy, while defending her choice to wear the controversial jacket.
The first lady said she wore the jacket to send a message to the media over its use of anonymous-sourced reporting. She wrote that she was determined to not let “the media’s false narratives affect my mission to help the children and families at the border.”
Of course, Melania Trump’s “rose-kiss print” collar probably won’t be seen as all that controversial. But it certainly was attention-getting, even as she sat, looking glum, at the far end of the second row.
Closer to the center of that row were her husband and four other living presidents, Barack Obama, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, along with their wives, Laura Bush and Hillary Clinton. Michelle Obama did not attend the service, with the New York Times saying that she was in Hawaii and “had a scheduling conflict.”
Before the funeral began, photos show Melania Trump looking a bit disconnected from the group, as her husband turned from her to chat up Obama, his White House predecessor. Perhaps, she was thinking about how she’ll officially be back on center stage as first lady on Jan. 20, when her husband is again sworn in as president.
The New York Times reported that Trump was talking “almost nonstop” to Obama, with the conversation seeming to be “mostly one-sided,” with Obama listening and responding with shorter answers.
President Joe Biden sat in the front row, with his wife, Jill Biden, and Vice President Kamala Harris and Harris’s husband, Doug Emhoff.
The Times said that Harris, who lost the bitterly fought Nov. 5 election to Trump, didn’t shake Trump’s hand when they arrived at the cathedral. Following the service, Emhoff shook Trump’s hand but Harris did not.
At the service, Biden eulogized Carter as a “practitioner of good works,” while the Carter’s grandson, Jason, remembered his grandfather as a president who “led this nation with love and respect.”
