From "What’s Up With Melania’s Collar?" (New York Magazine).
What does it mean? Obviously, it's an expression of a desire for love. But NY Magazine doesn't want to give her that — not to credit her with desiring love for the world and certainly not to fulfill any desire she might have to receive love. She will get no love from New York Magazine, where she will always be seen as icy, even if she is wearing a photograph of kissing lovers around her neck.
We're told the garment is "Pierpaolo Piccioli-era Valentino, from a collaboration he released with Japanese designer Jun Takahashi of Undercover in 2019." I'd like to know what "Renaissance sculpture" this is. I see from a 2019 fashion report that it's "a 19th-century neoclassical sculpture." I ask Grok for help and I am told, to my amazement, that it is "The Kiss" by Auguste Rodin! That's a very famous sculpture. I would expect it to be referred to by name. Rodin is not Renaissance or even neoclassical. But I will note that in Rodin's "Kiss," both the man's arms hang down around the woman's hips and do not appear near the neck, as I think I'm seeing in the photograph of Melania's collar. Of course, the Valentino image could have involved some chopping and repositioning. In short, I don't know the source of the image.
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43 comments:
marquemywords
@MARQUEMYWORD
Melania's Pilgrim dress screams "witchhunt". That's what the odious group of people have been engaged in for years against the Trump family. Melania's look conjures up visions of an innocent woman about to be burned at the stake and highlights the hypocrisy and harshness of that evil society. She behaved as stoically as any unhappy heroine ever has. I just love Melania.
2:36 PM · Jan 9, 2025
The manner in which it displays on the collar renders it abstract
Doesn't somebody, somewhere actually have to wear the stuff haute couture designers pump-out every year?
She should have gone with the image of Hunter Biden pulling the prostitute's hair from behind doggie style.
Disappearing comment again.
Wednesday Addams never looked so good.
They were trying so hard to be snotty they forgot to consult their Fact Checkers. It's more like a Puritan collar than a Pilgrim one, and the Puritans were the ones burning the witches in Salem; there's so much more to criticize if they compare Melania to the Puritans. A missed opportunity. And after all, considering the past 4 years of drapery & upholstery fashion choices, almost anything is an improvement. She could have worn a bowling shirt and looked better.
We’d be most fortunate if the most pressing issue is what Melania is wearing.
On the one hand, they hate her, on the other hand, they get to write about high fashion again, rather than whatever off the rack at Target outfit that "Dr Jill" was wearing.
It does look like something that Elaine would wear in Seinfeld.
Assumes without evidence Melania is even trying to send a message.
The collar is a subtle commentary upon Carter's Calvinistic puritanical political masochism. Carter never saw a criticism of America that he didn't like. We were never good enough for him, despite his smarmy claim that he would aspire to be as good a President as the American people were as a polity.
Melania has my sympathies. She didn't sign-up for this when she became Trump's 3rd wife, but she's stoically bearing that burden of constant national scrutiny and ruthless political warfare. She should win the next Nobel Peace prize.
Nobody "burned" witches in Salem. They hanged them. Show some respect for Professor Althouse's ancestors.
I'd like to know what "Renaissance sculpture" this is. I see from a 2019 fashion report that it's "a 19th-century neoclassical sculpture." I ask Grok for help and I am told, to my amazement, that it is "The Kiss" by Auguste Rodin!
@Althouse, you are assuming that a modern journalist could place the Renaissance within a century of when it occurred. If you asked whoever wrote this article who “Rodin” was they’d babble something about a monster in a Godzilla movie. Don’t you remember what Ben Rhodes had to say about modern journalists?
Fuck teh Mean Girls @the Yew Norker!
If she looked rather grim at the funeral, it's unlikely to have had anything to do with her attitude towards anyone else in the room, including her husband. Her mother died a year ago today.
I thought she looked adequately somber for a funeral and I liked the collar quite a bit. A way to distinguish without being showy.
Quite right ! Er..... which ones were her ancestors?
Exactly the kind of smug combination of pettiness and malignancy, leavened by abject ignorance, that one would expect from the national press.
She looked just fine. Hilary's eyebags were visible at howitzer range.
Cotton Mather.
The image for me suggested the romantic notion of Jimmy and Rosalynn being reunited in heaven. They were partners devoted to each other for a very long time, separated for a short time, and now together again.
iow
'Abelard and Heloise' without age difference!
It's just an image based loosely on the sculpture and used on a line of fashion togs.
Not that I know Rodin from Rodan but I have the internet. Although, I was surprised to see that Rodin was so recent, late 1800's.
Rodan began his career in the Mesozoic era.
And speaking of the internet, it's gotten a hold of the funeral video.
Some humorous alterations are in development.
Dr. Weevil, I also read that Melania’s mother died one year ago today. I suspect she attended today, in part, out of respect to both the late President as well as his wife. As I recall, Rosalyn told her family to call Melania specifically to let her know the invitation to her (Rosalyn’s) funeral was sincere and she had hoped Melania would accept the invitation.
The Seating Chart was hilarious. Why was Doug Emhoff elevated with a front and center position, above Obama and Trump? I find it hard to believe that they couldn't just do a single wide row.
At least she was there…
Melania strikes me as high maintenance mostly, and her messages are better ignored. Trump's choice in women, not mine. He's her ticket to important places.
Michelle Obama is also high maintenance but in a different way. It's important to her that you think that she's smart, which would be wearing.
One of our most beautiful, apoltiical, and fashinonable 1st ladies has to be portrayed in the a bad light. After all, she's Mrs. Trump. Maybe her lack of smiles and cartwheels had to do with the fact that its a funeral. And she doesnt really like the other Ex-POTUS and the DC crowd that tried to destroy her and Donald. Or sat by with cruel neutrality like the Bushes.
I can see by the picture the collar has the kissing couple on one side, but I couldn't make out the other side. Is it the same thing? Anyway the outfit looks chic and is fine. And New York Magazine can't understand what she meant by "I don't care, do U?" Gosh, it was all so confusing. Despite it being obvious to everyone.
Finally, would people shut up about New England witches. The remakable thing about 17th Century New England isn't that they hanged a few witches, its that they hanged so few of them compared to England and Europe. Its like rattling on about USA slavery, when it so much more prevelent and worse in other parts of the globe.
Meh.
Sexy!
She's cold on the outside and hot on the inside.
My favorite first lady, by a landslide.
I agree with Dr. Weevil. Losing your mother is hard, and the year anniversary isn't any easier when you are at a public funeral with everyone looking at you.
Wouldn’t it be nice if the whole President thing were Melania’s idea, and she is the mastermind of the operation?
New York magazine is absolutely my go-to source for accurate information on the Trumps, absolutely.
New York magazine ignored the elephant in the room, or more properly, the absent elephant: It ought to be a scandal that Michelle Obama couldn't re-arrange her busy schedule to make it to the funeral of the idolized former president. They even brought up Mrs. Obama's sense of style, without mentioning her absence.
Big Mike said…
“Assumes without evidence Melania is even trying to send a message.”
She’s sending a message that Trump *is* really gonna implement The Handmaid’s Tale this time. Wake up people!!!
She may be a Wife now, but she’ll just be an Unwoman once Trump is out of office.
Her fashion quirks, to us, can be easily explained. She’s Eastern European. Her mother was a fashion designer. As a child, she designed her own clothes too, largely out of necessity. I like the idea that the collar is a complicated symbol referencing Rosalyn and Jimmah reunited, and perhaps it’s a style and motif also honoring her mother’s work. How horrible to have to attend a state funeral surrounded by people who have contempt for you, and media judging you, on the first anniversary of your own mother’s death. Still, she went and behaved with her usual dignity and class. She only looked annoyed when others around her were chatting too loudly in a church.
Michelle Obama’s absence was as tacky as her fashion sense. And Hunter Biden’s presence was grotesque.
President's wives are overrated.
Melania is striking, and has a nice figure, but I've never understood the gushing that she prompts in so many; Laura Bush was semi-attractive (which is about as good as it gets among lady librarians) in her younger days.
The less said about the rest of them, the better.
A stunning revelation, easily overlooked, if not for the vigilance of Chantal Fernandez.
I just more about Mrs. Pence "snubbing" Trump. It seems that Pence and trump haven't spoken for 4 years, and this was the first public occassion for a smile and a handshake. Mrs. Pence, however, ignored Trump and kept seated. The MSM tried to defend this, by talking about J6, and Trump "insurrectionists" shouting "hang mike pence", but its actually more mundane.
Mrs. Pence is your typical Republican establishment type. A total conformist and 2nd rater. She loved going to Broadway and seeing "Hamilton". She loved being in DC and being the VP's wife. But that vulgar Trump...my dear, the types one has to associate with in politics! Finally, she can hold her head high at cocktail parties.
Was Dougie there? What was he wearing?
Is Humper's art career over now?
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