A few hours after her father’s news conference on Wednesday at Trump Tower, Ivanka Trump posted a notice on her personal Facebook page officially announcing that she was taking a “formal leave of absence” from all management and operative responsibilities at her fashion brand and that she would be stepping down from her role at the Trump Organization.
She would, she wrote, be spending the next few months concentrating on settling her children into their new lives in Washington and exploring how she could “determine the most impactful and appropriate ways for me to serve our country.”
This follows earlier decisions to separate her personal social media accounts from those of her brand. Yet in one meaningful area, Ms. Trump and her brand are harder to divide: That is, her wardrobe.
After all, the same day she announced she was separating Ivanka Trump the person from Ivanka Trump the brand, The Daily Mail announced she had worn an Ivanka Trump coat to her father’s news conference. Then it offered a get-the-look box and link. In case, you know, anyone wanted to buy the garment.
On the one hand, there’s something ridiculous about suggesting that Ms. Trump not wear whatever clothes are in her closet, and as the founder of a fashion brand that bears her name, presumably part of her job has been to promote said brand by wearing it — to, in effect, demonstrate her belief in her own products. So she probably has a lot of such products within reach. And it’s not her fault if some media outlet chooses to point out that she looks good and tells people how they, too, can look good.
On the other hand, her brand is clearly built on her image: Not just her name, but her face, and what she represents. It’s selling the promise that women who wear her clothes can get a piece of her gold dust — and now that this gold dust is visible in the corridors (and news conferences) of power, that is only going to be more true. Every time she is pictured in an Ivanka Trump outfit, it is bound to give a boost to the Ivanka Trump brand. Whether or not they are technically linked.
It’s unclear whether Ms. Trump would benefit from that financially, as specifics about her monetary relationship with her brand were not included in her statement. But even if she is selling her part of the company, for a prominent member of the first family to be seen to be endorsing a brand with her own name on it is a complicated proposition. And an endorsement is exactly what an appearance in an item of clothing has become.
This is a time, like it or not, of obsession with the wardrobe selections of anyone in the public eye, especially women in the public eye (their clothes are more interesting than men’s, after all). And though she has repeatedly said that she will not take a formal role in the new administration, Ms. Trump is emerging as the female face of her father’s inner circle. Simply consider the news conference, where she was the only woman from the immediate family in attendance. There’s a reason The Daily Mail did not get into the specifics of what her brothers wore. She is smart enough to know that any time she steps out of her door, someone is going to try to snap a picture and parse her clothes.
You can argue that Ms. Trump is not an elected official, and thus to demand that she recuse herself from all products associated with her name is unfair punishment. You could say that if she wears, for example, an Alexander McQueen dress, as she did on election night, she is giving that brand a boost, so why shouldn’t she do the same for her own brand? You can point out that there is precedent because she wore her own line numerous times during the campaign, including to introduce her father at the Republican National Convention — but then, the latter choice was not without controversy.
In part, the resulting brouhaha was, of course, because her brand then promoted that appearance with its own “get the look” link, as it famously did, without her knowledge, when she wore her own-brand bracelet during her family’s appearance on “60 Minutes.” Presumably that won’t happen any more. But brands need personalities to succeed, at whatever price point, and those personalities derive most easily from, well, a person.
A scenario in which Ivanka Trump the brand removes Ms. Trump utterly from its identity is hard to imagine. Though to be fair, the brand’s website is adorned with images and line drawings of many different kinds of women and not with Ms. Trump, so it may be possible.
Either way, this is another illustration of the multiple complicated issues that are going to arise with a member of the first family who also had designs on being a fashion brand. There’s really no playbook for this, as the Ivanka team — figuring it out as it goes along — is quick to remind. In which case, the clothes question should be the next piece of the puzzle to be solved.
cource:nytimes.com