Why Melania Trump destroyed Jackie Kennedy's garden: two First Ladies in comparison and one rose garden too many
Wife The Donald has always been inspired by Jfk's wife, but has now "canceled" her shrine in the White House. But, deep down, there is a specific (political) reason
Does Melania Trump Erase Jackie's Track?
“Now the First Lady is Melania. Our Jackie O. Style icon like her. Call her Melania T ». So proclaimed Donald Trump shortly after his election as president in 2016. And indeed, from clothing choices to furniture choices, the 50-year-old former model, now First Lady of Anerica, has repeatedly shown that she has the style of his wife in mind. John Kennedy. This is why it is surprising today that she, Melania, wanted to overturn one of the symbolic places of her role model in the White House, that is the Rose Garden adjacent to the Oval Office, unleashing a flood of criticisms (some really ironic) on the net. But between jokes, memes and comparisons ("it looks like a North Korean prison", "it looks like a Soviet mausoleum") one regret unites all the comments: why did you delete the flowers and colors of Jackie's garden? And above all, why did he uproot those wonderful wild apple trees? With a proluvium of images comparison between before and after. Yet, when Lady Trump announced the renovation of the garden, she said she wanted to be inspired by Jackie's style. Something is wrong.
The Rose Garden: from Kennedy to Trump aesthetics
The original Rose Garden was designed by Rachel "Bunny" Mellon, a close friend of Jackie Kennedy and an expert in landscape architecture, following the ideas of the presidential couple. Today The Cut recounts the memories of Mellon, that Jackie dreamed of a garden similar "in quality and appearance" to the ones she had seen while traveling in Europe. So Rachel Mellon carefully selected the seasonal rotation of plants and flowers and "chose the wild apple trees because they belong to the rose family and blend well with the latter." Speaking of the White House's new Rose Garden project, Melania said she wanted to restore part of the Kennedy's general vision and announced "Jfk white rose bushes." In fact, however, he just eliminated that aesthetic and removed all the trees except the four big magnolias. The rose garden has no more colors, now dominates the white and a huge lawn. A garden, as Newsweek writes, "in line with the lean and haunting aesthetics of this administration." But a lot of media attention (and politics) on this garden is also due to the fact that, in recent months, with the pandemic, it has become the privileged place for conferences and meetings. Donald Trump loves talking in the Rose Garden because, according to The Washington Post, "Natural light improves his complexion." Hence the Trump choice to customize it right in the middle of the election campaign. Right here, in fact, the political conventions of the presidential campaign will take place even if a federal rule would prohibit it: the White House should host only institutional events and not expressly political.
Jackie was his role model
That Melania was stylistically inspired by Jackie Kennedy was clear from her first day as First Lady: the light blue dress worn for the Trump oath and signed by Ralph Lauren, was a precise quote: it was enough to look at the detail of the gloves . Jacqueline Lee Bouvier (1929 - 1994) came from a New York high society family: her father was a French stock broker, her mother the daughter of bankers. Graduated in Art History, she began working as a journalist for the Whashington Time, but after her wedding with JFK she devoted herself to her husband in his political ascent. The French allure, although she was born and raised in the USA (in France she had studied for a period) and the culture gave her that charm that seduced the Americans. The ability to casually wear formal dresses with recurring stylistic details (the string of pearls) and choose casual ones with apparent carelessness made her the symbol of relaxed and timeless elegance.
Melania and Jackie as Eve vs Eve?
But the Jackie quote game has gone on on other important, indeed very important occasions, those where style experts couldn't help but notice. For example, dinner with Queen Elizabeth at Buckinghan Palace in 2019: shape of the neckline of the dress, long white gloves. The pupil has passed the teacher. But perhaps, as in the perennial game of Eve against Eve, after having loved and imitated her, the pupil must "eliminate" the teacher, as she did with the apple trees. But here, the political role that the garden will play is worth much more than a style legacy.
Combinations studied
Not just public events: Melania's stylists must have an immense photographic archive of Jackie Kennedy Onassis at their disposal. Because the game of similarities and combinations is proposed and re-proposed even in informal situations, like this white pantone and black t-shirt combination.
