For her first public appearance in more than a month, Melania Trump turned up in the White House’s Rose Garden wearing a repeat designer outfit.
The First Lady announced her “Fostering the Future” initiative is expanding its reach through a $2 million commitment from IndyCar and Fox Sports to support scholarships at Indiana University and Purdue University. The event was held in advance of this weekend’s Freedom 250 Grand Prix, a 1.7-mile circuit that will loop around such historic sites as the Washington Monument, the U.S. Capitol, the National Gallery of Art and the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. The two-day event will be the first NTT IndyCar Series race to be held in Washington, D.C., and is meant to celebrate America’s 250th anniversary and world‑class racing.
Wearing a pale blue Michael Kors buttoned-down shirt with the collar up and a red Dior pencil skirt with Manolo Blahnik stilettos, FLOTUS said, “I heard you missed me. Well, here I am.”
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The First Lady’s most recent major outing was at last month’s FIFA World Cup finals between Spain and Argentina. For that occasion, Trump showed some loyalty for American brands by sporting awhite Gap T-shirt, a Thom Browne bomber jacket and Ralph Lauren trousers. She polished off the look with Roger Vivier flats.
At Thursday’s White House event, she told the crowd, “The greatest achievement America can make is not technology, infrastructure or capital markets. It’s our children.”
The former model has worn the red Dior skirt with a matching jacket for other photo-ops, including an appearance at the 2024 Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. She first wore the fire engine red ensemble, an updated version of Christian Dior’s 1947 “Bar” suit, for a 2017 official visit with the former president to Paris to meet French president Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte. The Rose Garden setting for Thursday’s event was previously critiqued by some for FLOTUS’ 2020 reconfiguration. At that time, the removal of 10 crab apple trees that the late horticulturist’s Bunny Mellon had included in her transformation of the Rose Garden under former first lady Jacqueline Kennedy’s watchful eyes prompted much criticism.
