The Trump Era Is Influencing Fashion In Some Pretty Unsettling Ways
HuffPost
We asked fashion experts to share all the ways Trump 2.0 is influencing what we wear.
Months before President Donald Trump was elected for a second term last year, Gen Z fashion influencers on TikTok said they could have easily predicted his win.
The way fashion was trending, you could tell America ― and more specifically, American women ― were moving toward conservatism: They pointed to the tradwife-y milkmaid and prairie dresses. The way Americana as an aesthetic was showing up, and Ralph Lauren and little Nancy Reagan squared jackets were back. How the racially-loaded “clean girl” and “quiet luxury” aesthetics were going viral. Embracing thinness again through GLP-1s.
The fashion girlies were right: National exit polls showed that Trump carried white women’s vote again in 2024, with 53% of white American women voting for the Republican.
The truth is, fashion is always in conversation with politics: simultaneously reflecting and shaping society, said Einav Rabinovitch-Fox, a historian who writes about fashion and politics, and the author of “Dressed For Freedom: The Fashionable Politics of American Feminism.”
“What’s interesting now is that, while during Trump’s first administration we saw more resistance and backlash from the fashion industry, now we see more compliance,” Rabinovitch-Fox said.
