The Hat - Updated

photo credit: Brian Snyder/Reuters

Along with many other people, I've been pondering the hat. My first thought was that Melania was trying to hide her face, as she sometimes appears to do with her big sunglasses. After a little more thought, I decided she was trying to upstage her husband, and it worked. Here's how the Washington Post's fashion critic Robin Givhan described the hat moment:

The day began with a hat. It ended with the hat, too. Not literally, but nostalgically. Over the course of 12 hours, no Cézanne at the National Gallery, no forest of cherry blossom branches, no Clinton or Bush china, no goat cheese gâteau, not even Chanel haute couture could compare to that magnificent halo of pure white light perched atop first lady Melania Trump’s perfectly groomed head. Nothing else mattered. There was nothing else.

That hat, broad-brimmed with a high, blocked crown, announced the first lady’s presence as boldly and theatrically as a brigade of trumpeters. It was the bright white hat of a gladiator worn on an overcast day, a kind of glamorous public shield when sunglasses would not do at all. That hat was a force field that kept folks, the wrong folks, from getting too close.

It was a diva crown. A grand gesture of independence. A church hat. The Lord is my shepherd. Deliver us from evil. Amen.

In a long article, Givhan also deconstructs Melania's Monday night dinner dress, the State Dinner dress and the tailored white suit she wore with the hat, then finishes with this:

On these official occasions, the first lady sometimes appears to be dressing for a fashion-shoot version of the event — a kind of heightened reality of an already rather surreal circumstance. But there is also the sense that she is stubbornly and confidently dressing up and refusing to relax into today’s accepted decorum. The result is that she sometimes seems to have a tin ear for empathetic dressing. And sometimes, she wears a hat, which, for women, long ago ceased being about fashion in this country and became more of an affectation, whether it be the religiosity of Sunday church service or the self-conscious flamboyance of the Kentucky Derby.

A hat is a celebration of oneself. It is about presenting one’s most adorned, spit-shined, upright self to God, social media or, in this case, the history books. Read the article here.

Update #1: Many strange pictures came out of the French state visit, I'm going to post some of them here, starting with this tweet:

Love and loathing, in the same frame. pic.twitter.com/Tr94kPsco6

— BrooklynDad_Defiant! (@mmpadellan) April 25, 2018

Thursday morning, update #2: More strange moments from the Macrons' visit to Washington:

A gif of the hat:

THE HAT pic.twitter.com/wNsrjSed2T

— Josh Billinson (@jbillinson) April 24, 2018

"Hook 'em Horns!"

photo credit thehill.com

Primate grooming:


Trump appeared to be seriously pissed off about something as he walked out the door to greet the Macrons for dinner:


And finally that weird moment when Melania won't hold her husband's hand:


People.com has compiled some of Donald and Melania's most cringe-worthy moments, read it here.

And one more thing: Today (Thursday) is Melania's birthday. Her husband says he's too busy to have gotten her a gift, although he did get her a card and some flowers. By-the-way, Melania is now 48, way, way past the age when Trump believes women should just check out. From vogue.com:

But around the same time as [the "grab 'em by the pussy" tape] dropped, a 2002 Howard Stern tape revealed more of PEOTUS Trump’s choice thoughts on women. Specifically, the then-56-year-old real estate developer told Stern that he typically dumps girlfriends when they turn 35 for the sin of, well, possessing “too much life experience.”

“What is it at 35, Howard?” Trump wondered aloud. “It’s called checkout time.”

If Trump hadn't been elected president would he have dumped Melania and moved on to someone younger? My guess? Yes.