Amid the chaos of President Trump’s first 100 days — norms upended, tariffs levied and tariffs paused, confrontations in the courts — one thing has remained consistent. Dependable even.
The administration’s look, and just how much it matters.
Mr. Trump’s cultivation of his own image (suit and tie and hair and tan) has been so relentless that it has become shorthand for all that he represents. So, too, when it comes to those around him: his cabinet secretaries, closest aides and family members. Together they convey, as potently as any executive order, the value system that the president claims to represent and the promises on which he has built his second term.
In the world of the endless, and increasingly unmediated, scroll, where pictures are the first line of communication and the president is the executive producer of everyone’s reality show, the costumes have become central to the messaging. They act as accessories to the executive orders that challenge the status quo, the separation of powers and the bounds of legality. They are — of course — less important than such orders, but they are part of the pitch.
Mr. Trump’s first 100 days are partly a story of an administration where looking the part is crucial to playing the part. Where the very meaning of gender is codified in clothing and hair — facial or flowing — as well as by fiat. Where the secretary of defense has built a glam room in the Pentagon for promotional appearances. Where the refusal of the Ukrainian president to don a suit for the Oval Office becomes a public symbol of his refusal to kowtow. Clothes are a coded sign of fealty, and fealty is a nonnegotiable quality, best worn on the sleeve.
What does this administration stand for? Its actions may be messy, but its style is strategic. Just because the dress sometimes seems weirdly close to cosplay does not mean it is not also effective. The insinuation: Do not believe what you hear or what you read. Believe your eyes!
Believe, for example, Mr. Trump when he says he stands for America itself. He has, after all, cloaked himself if not in the actual flag, then in the colors of the flag.
His blue suit, white shirt and red tie have become as much a uniform as any actual uniform, adopted wholesale by many of the male members of his administration, especially at moments of major public posturing. JD Vance wore it for the Zelensky meeting in the Oval Office; Mr. Vance and House Speaker Mike Johnson wore it for the presidential address to Congress; and Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director, wore it for his confirmation hearing.
That implicit patriotism is topped only by the explicit patriotism of Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, who has taken the Washington practice of wearing a flag lapel pin to new heights by regularly wearing an Old Glory pocket handkerchief with his bright blue suits, like a pledge of fashion allegiance.
Such a star-spangled sartorial display, however, turned out to be but the precursor to Kid Rock’s Oval Office visit in a jumpsuit so garishly flagtastic it seemed more suited to an Uncle Sam look-alike contest than to a presidential meet-and-greet.
And that’s just the beginning. Mr. Trump is also making America rich again. How do we know? He did not just announce a new Golden Age, he’s modeling it. As he posted on Truth Social, “HE WHO HAS THE GOLD MAKES THE RULES.”
It started with the inaugural balls, with his family dressed in the sort of bustled and swathed gowns that seemed to have been selected to recall the original Gilded Age. It continued with the redecorated Oval Office, with its gold damask chairs and curtains, its mantel covered in golden urns and walls festooned with oils in elaborate gold frames.
The perspective was formalized in Melania Trump’s official portrait, in which she looked like nothing so much as the tuxedo-clad executive chairman of the board. And it was echoed by Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, wearing a $50,000 gold Rolex as she posed outside a prison in El Salvador. That watch gleamed even brighter than the new golden visa for millionaires that Mr. Trump displayed in early April and the gilded lapel pin in the form of the president’s profile.
Or the gold crosses worn by many of the women in the executive branch, a reminder that the administration is, indeed, making America godly again. The crosses glint at the necks of Attorney General Pam Bondi and the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt; they glimmer delicately against the throats of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins and Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer. As with the bowed heads and clasped hands on view at the beginning of meetings, they paint a picture of faith in broad strokes.
The effect is impossible to miss, like the pantomime of making America safe again embedded in the gear donned by various cabinet secretaries as they join their subordinates to pose for promotional pictures in the field.
See, for example, Ms. Noem masquerading as an ICE agent, complete with bulletproof vest and baseball cap, or Mr. Patel holding a news conference in his F.B.I. windbreaker or Mr. Vance in his Army fatigues — camouflage literal and metaphorical. See Mr. Vance and his wife, Usha, in matching Army green parkas visiting a U.S. military base in Greenland, and Mrs. Trump likewise opting for Army green for a visit to disaster zones in North Carolina and California.
They were all following the lead of Mr. Trump, whose pugnacious mug shot — chin down, jaw set, eyes glaring; the picture of U.F.C. aggro spirit in a suit — has become his favored pose. It was replicated for his official inaugural portrait and for his Truth Social profile (where his face is painted with the American flag, in case anyone missed the message that he is fighting for his country). Just as his defiant fist-raised pose after the attempted assassination in Butler, Pa., has been immortalized in an oil painting that hangs in the grand foyer of the White House.
And just as his vow to disrupt the establishment found its embodiment in the person of Elon Musk, who has literally disrupted the uniform of the Washington establishment with his dark-mirror reflection of the Trump ethos in his black MAGA hat, jeans, blazer and logo tees, his blazer-and-tee-clad DOGE acolytes are the equivalents of Mr. Trump’s red-white-and-blue mini-mes.
Mr. Zelensky may have been excoriated for not wearing a suit in the Oval Office, but Mr. Musk was heralded for it. After all, the fastest way to convince the watching world that you are moving fast and breaking things is by dressing in the mode of those who invented the myth of moving fast and breaking things. When President Javier Milei of Argentina gave Mr. Musk a chain saw at the Conservative Political Action Conference in February, it was less a joke than a revelation: 100 days in, the props have gotten as much attention as any coherent progress.
Slideshow: Doug Mills/The New York Times; Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images; Eric Lee/The New York Times; Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times; Brian Snyder/Reuters; Régine Mahaux/The White House; Kenny Holston/The New York Times; Alex Brandon/Associated Press; Win McNamee/Getty Images
First collage: Eric Lee/The New York Times; Pool photo by Ron Sachs; Kenny Holston/The New York Times; Andrew Harnik/Getty Images; Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times; Alex Brandon/Associated Press; Jim Watson/AFP — Getty Images; Pool photo by Shawn Thew; Pool photo by Julien De Rosa
Second collage: Kenny Holston/The New York Times; Wojtek Radwanski/AFP — Getty Images; Doug Mills/The New York Times; Andrew Harnik/Getty Images; Samuel Corum/Getty Images; Eric Lee/The New York Times;
Third collage: Doug Mills/The New York Times; Pool photo by Alex Brandon-Pool; Eric Lee/The New York Times; Pool photo by Mandel Ngan; Régine Mahaux/The White House
Forth collage: Mark Schiefelbein/Associated Press; Kent Nishimura/Reuters; Eric Lee/The New York Times; Leah Millis/Reuters; Kenny Holston/The New York Times; Marta Lavandier/Associated Press; Craig Hudson/Reuters; Saul Loeb/AFP — Getty Images; Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP — Getty Images Images; Jim Watson/AFP — Getty Images; Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images; Doug Mills/The New York Times
Fifth collage: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, via Getty Images; Jr. Rod Lamkey/Associated Press; Pool photo by Jim Watson; Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images; Win McNamee/Getty Images; Kenny Holston/The New York Times; The White House; Pool photo by Alex Brandon;
Sixth collage: Eric Lee/The New York Times; Oliver Contreras/AFP — Getty Images; Eric Lee/The New York Times; FOX; Kevin Lamarque/Reuters; Doug Mills/The New York Times; Al Drago for The New York Times
