Lol “odd to an untrained eye”— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) June 4, 2019
Here's what Esquire magazine had to say, referring to the picture below:
It's not easy to put your finger on the exact cause of the problem, but you don't need to know the ins and outs of white tie to know that something is not right with this situation.
Some folks have surmised that it must be the jacket. It's too short, which is allowing that bizarrely enormous swath of white vest to sit below it. But I'm pretty sure that's not actually the issue here. To understand the actual cause of the cognitive dissonance, you just have to remember the way Trump treats a tie, and then consider the role of the vest itself in this whole affair.
As a refresher, not that you need it: Trump's ties are way too damn long, reaching well past his waist. You can't do that with a bow tie. But you can make a vest that's too long, and probably for the same reason as the ties: vanity, and the mistaken belief that a longer-than-average element around the belly distracts from Trump's girth.
The jacket is, indeed, short. It's supposed to be. The problem is simply that the vest is too long. (Read the article here.)
photo credit: Getty Images
It's not just that the vest is too long vertically, it's also too small horizontally. It may have fit Donald correctly 25 pounds ago but at his current girth, it's straining to stay buttoned. It looks like it could pop open at any time.
How do you get white tie right? A quick internet search produced this:
The Trump sons and son-in-law missed the mark on one detail or another too; Eric, in particular, gets a "What was he thinking?" for the buttoned tailcoat and the two little white triangles sticking out underneath it:
Aside from his ill-fitting outfit, I'm struck by how wretchedly miserable Donald looks:
photo credit: Getty Images
photo credit: bbc.co.uk
Many observers have said that an event like this, i.e., a state dinner in his honor, with President Donald J. Trump at the center of things and the focus of all the attention, is his favorite part of being president. He loves these ceremonial events in foreign countries, the fancier and more elaborate the better, because they're all about him. He's been longing for this particular event from the day he became president. He also appears to have genuine respect for Her Majesty. So why so stern, Donald? Your immediate predecessor managed to crack a nice smile during his state dinner, and he got the white tie right:
Donald looked uncomfortably out-of-place at the church on Sunday (read about that here and here) and he appears to be just as uncomfortable and out-of-place here. Wearing an ill-fitting formal outfit isn't all that important in the overall scheme of things but I do wonder. As important as this dinner was to him, and with all the resources available to him, why didn't Donald (and Don Jr., Eric and Jared for that matter,) make the effort to get it right?
Update: The Washington Post asked boutique owner Ezra Lizio-Katzen for his insight about Donald's clothing choices. First, last night's tuxedo:
The vest, Lizio-Katzen said, is supposed to be shorter than the front of the tailcoat.
“People wear their pants much lower than they used to,” he said. “So even though a vest should be a certain length, if you wear your pants too low then you get an unsightly gap between the pants and the bottom of the vest where your shirt shows.”
With a regular suit, that’s not necessarily a problem because the jacket will cover the bottom of the vest. With a tailcoat, though, the front is cut shorter. The choice, then, is either a too-long vest or a visible shirt. That said, Lizio-Katzen said that this case appeared to be “exceptional” given that several inches of Trump’s vest is showing. (The jacket, he said, was properly tailored.)
Again, Charles’s tuxedo is properly proportioned, perhaps in part a function of his wearing this sort of formalwear more regularly. Part of it, too, is that Charles probably wears his pants higher — a function largely of the difference in size between the two men.
“Generally people with his proportions wear [pants] lower, particularly in the front,” he said. Men with larger stomachs will often wear pants below their bellies. In this case, that appears to have meant the need for a longer vest.
On to Donald's pants in general:
This, too, ties back to Trump’s size, according to Lizio-Katzen. He assumes that Trump buys suits off the rack, rather than having them custom made, which is where the problem originates.
In his essay about Trump’s suits written in 2017, Lizio-Katzen noted that Trump wears larger jackets in a likely effort to look broader in the shoulder — and therefore less disproportionately wide in the middle. Buying suits off-the-rack, though, has a ripple effect of the suit fitting awkwardly.
“Because he’s wearing a suit size probably two sizes at least too big for him in order to not make it look like he’s got a big stomach and instead make it look like he’s just a big guy,” he explained, “the pants that come with that suit are likely too big for him, especially if he wears the pants below his stomach.”
“That’s why they’re baggy like that. When you make a suit, everything’s extrapolated. So if they grow it, the pants keep getting bigger and bigger and bigger,” he added. The suit designers naturally assume someone wearing a bigger suit jacket also has much bigger legs. In this case, Trump doesn’t.
And, for good measure, Donald's ties:
In his book released last year, former New Jersey governor Chris Christie wrote that Trump told him to wear longer ties, too, to look thinner. Lizio-Katzen doesn’t ascribe to that — or to the idea that heavier people shouldn’t wear horizontal stripes or that pinstripes are slimming.
“My advice would be go on a diet, honestly,” he said. Ouch. (Read the article here.)
In the interest of fairness, I'll post this picture, from tonight's "reciprocal" dinner at Winfield House, the official residence of the U.S. Ambassador. I can admit, Donald looks better tonight:
Finally, does Mr. Lizio-Katzen have any advice for Donald? Yes, but Donald won't like it:
In the interest of fairness, I'll post this picture, from tonight's "reciprocal" dinner at Winfield House, the official residence of the U.S. Ambassador. I can admit, Donald looks better tonight:
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