Look of the Week: First lady Melania Trump means business in official portrait

(CNN) — With her eyes fixed straight ahead, first lady Melania Trump leans forward onto an impossibly reflective surface — is it a desk, a mirror, a cool surface of water? — as her perfectly manicured fingertips hold her balance. It’s the kind of power stance you’d expect from a particularly confident contestant on “The Apprentice.” Instead, it’s the 47th official first lady portrait.

Released by the White House on Monday, the picture — captured by Belgian photographer Régine Mahaux — has already sparked discussions online. It is first lady Trump’s second official portrait, and the contrast between the two images is significant. In 2017, the furor around Trump’s first lady photo largely centered on her decision to wear Dolce & Gabbana — a sartorial choice that shocked fashion-watchers across the US as a missed opportunity to showcase American-made. Now, Trump is defiantly dressed in yet another single-breasted tuxedo jacket from the Italian brand. But this time, there’s other artistic choices to unpack.

Eight years ago, we were introduced to Trump in vivid technicolor: her bronzed complexion and piercing blue eyes perfectly framed inside her caramel balayage. Today, viewers are presented with Trump in a stern grayscale. Where there was once a wistful Mona Lisa-style facial expression — lips parted enough to suggest a smile or a grimace, depending on perspective — now there is no room for interpretation. With her mouth closed, Trump is firm and resolute. This time, the tables have turned (literally). Instead, it appears that the first lady is analyzing you.

“I love the reflection of herself — representing that Melania Trump is a hands-on president’s wife — on the business at hand,” wrote LA Times and Washington Times journalist Scott Holleran, on X. But to some, the formidable posing is just that — posing. On social media, the image has been compared to promotional shots of Claire Underwood, the fictional first lady of the Netflix series “House of Cards,” and Kim Kardashian in a fashion shoot for GQ magazine.

But however obtuse, the portrait is a continuation of the soft power messaging communicated by Trump at the inauguration. Her Eric Javitz boater-style hat, often positioned to shield her eyes from the cameras, was a physical boundary — keeping everyone, including her husband who leant in for a kiss, at a distance. Now, even in the image taken by Mahaux, Trump is further away from the camera with an ocean (or mirrored desk) separating viewer and subject.

President Donald Trump similarly made waves for his official headshot earlier this month — his steely glare, immortalized by his chief photographer Daniel Torok, was a far cry from the ear-to-grin captured in 2017. “You’ve got to wonder, if a person deliberately takes that pose, what’s going on?” said John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser, in an interview with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins.

Both Trumps have witnessed first-hand the power of a striking image in altering public opinion. In July 2024, dramatic photos of President Trump surviving an assassination attempt during a Republican rally in Pennsylvania flooded the internet. Bloodsoaked with a fist in the air, surrounded by Secret Service agents, the dynamic photographs rendered Trump a heroic outlier. Even his critics were forced to agree. “Whoever tried to kill him failed,” wrote Benjamin Wallace-Wells in the New Yorker. “It is already the indelible image of our era of political crisis and conflict.”

Not every photo can be controlled — as Pennsylvania proves — but after several years of his image being meme-d to oblivion, the president is taking optics more seriously. Now it seems the first lady has taken a leaf out of her husband’s book. Both are looking to reframe public perception, one picture at a time.

The-CNN-Wire
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