What do you wear to a party with a mission to make America “hot” again?
If you’re Olivia English, it’s a long-sleeve cherry red sheath dress, one she proudly tells me she’s owned for ten years. Her blonde hair falls below her collar bone, and her makeup appears minimal, save for jet black lashes. Her overall philosophy? A rebuke of all things “frumpy.”
“I don’t wear what I wear for me,” she says. “Because I don’t see how I look right now. That’s for the people.”
English, a business owner from Kansas City, traveled more than 1,000 miles to attend the right-leaning online women’s magazine The Conservateur’s sold-out “America Is Hot Again” party at Butterworth’s bistro in Washington D.C. The petite entrepreneur, whose business helps homeowners repurpose waste for a greener future, is one of more than 200 guests who stepped out on a Thursday evening to show their support for The Conservateur, its founders, and its mission to “restore long-lost moral and aesthetic refinement.” To English, the five-year-old lifestyle publication is a resource not only for politics, but for home, fashion, and beauty trends. Though she chose not to buy a dress for the party (fast-fashion is a “race to the bottom,” she says), she sports a polka-dot manicure. Polka-dots were included in The Conservateurs spring trend forecast.
All the effort she puts into her appearance, she tells me and another guest, Mary Wheeler, has a ripple effect. Men, including the dozen or so in our immediate vicinity—all of whom are wearing slacks and sport jackets, if not full suits—would wear just about anything, like the “T-shirt they’ve had since high school,” or stained jeans they haven’t washed, if it weren’t for the women in their lives setting the example, she says.
Hotness, for all intents and purposes at this party, is seen as a conduit: that elevates everyone, men and women alike.
Wheeler, a bare-faced brunette in a floral blazer and wire-rimmed glasses, politely disagrees with the idea of dressing solely for an audience. “When you dress well, you feel so much better about yourself,” she says.
Where they align, however, is on the concept of “intention,” which requires effort and consideration of the people you’ll encounter in whatever outfit you put on your body that day.
“I just had our first baby nine months ago,” Wheeler says, noting that these days, sweatpants are an ever-present temptation. “I just had to grapple more with the fact of, how do I want to present myself, first to my husband, but to my kids as well?”
Says English, “at the end of the day, a lot of this”—what we wear—”is [seen] through the male gaze. You want to make sure that you’re a flower blooming for you as much as for the outside world.”
We pivot the conversation to makeup and cosmetic procedures as they relate to presenting oneself. English says she doesn’t wear lipstick, and in relation to cosmetic enhancements, hasn’t “had anything done.”
“I was a little intimidated to come because I’m a seven in Kansas City,” she says. “I’m a hard five in D.C.”
How does a party about making a country “hot again” come to be? That’s just one of the questions I posed to Jayme Franklin, The Conservateur’s 27-year-old co-founder, two days before the event took place in April this year.
Franklin, a Bay Area native, founded The Conservateur after graduating from UC Berkeley in 2020. She cites early fashion blogs, like Jules Sariñana’s Sincerely, Jules, and digital media brands like Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop, as her gateways into the all-encompassing lifestyle space. However, as diverse as the women’s media ecosystem is, “there was just nothing that was specifically catered towards the conservative Christian, traditional-leaning woman,” she says.
“I would say this about TC—yes, we get involved with politics, it gets a lot of clicks and a lot of excitement, and we’ve definitely done a lot of profiles with women involved in the Trump administration, yada yada. But I actually think our culture is the most important part of our magazine,” she says.
The Conservateur’s culture coverage tackles dating, etiquette, and career, as well as fashion and beauty, through the lens of Christian conservatism, which is at odds with “more of this feminist, progressive lifestyle” Franklin says is championed by mainstream media. By contrast, she says, The Conservateur is “bringing back traditional femininity and the whole lifestyle attached to that as well.”
I asked her to elaborate on this idea of “traditional femininity,” and was surprised when she cited the recent past as a time when our cultural understanding of beauty was, as she says, more universal, or true.
“I think [traditional beauty] is just what beauty was before, like a decade ago,” she says. “There is just common beauty that we know. I think of the ’90s supermodels or the ’80s supermodels as well, like the Cindy Crawford type, and that’s what I think people want to see now.”
According to Franklin, readers aren’t getting that from women’s magazines like Vogue, or Glamour. “They’re trying to take things that are just what everybody knows are ugly and trying to make it like they’re good,” she continues, “and we’re kind of the antithesis to that.
“What we always say at The Conservateur is that we’re promoting beauty and truth and everything that’s good,” she says.
The women who appear to embody The Conservateur’s definition of beauty and truth include Lara Trump, Fox News’s Ainsley Earhardt, and White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, the latter of whom they dubbed “Wonder Woman.” Alongside their shared political beliefs, these women, like the team behind The Conservateur (who feature heavily on the brand’s website and social media), all share a certain look—long hair, curled at the ends, heavily made-up faces. Is this what is considered the ideal conservative aesthetic in 2025?
At The Conservateur’s America Is Hot Again party on April 10, I decided to find out.
Per the invitation, the event was to be an “epic Golden Age celebration” of President Donald Trump’s America, for “devoted fans” of the website, its founders, and “kindred spirits.” Tickets, which included access to the open bar and canapes, were advertised for $65 each. A few days before the event, The Conservateur wrote to their 124,000 Instagram followers that all 150 tickets had sold out. Luckily, I’d snagged a press invite—one of many, I learned once inside and surrounded by microphones—and arrived just before the festivities kicked off.
As my Uber slowed to a halt outside Butterworths, I looked up from my phone in time to catch three young women in platform heels and miniskirts filing into a two-story burgundy building on a tree lined corner of Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. I was at the right place.
It was 7:32 p.m. when I walked into the private room upstairs, just two minutes after the doors had officially opened, and already there were a couple dozen women inside mingling, many with cocktail glasses in hand. Pink and white balloons were scattered about the oriental rugs, while cocktail tables served up The Conservateur-embossed napkins and clusters of miniature discoballs. A menu posted at the bar featured cocktails like “God & Country” (a paloma, rebranded) and “J’Adore Cowboys” (a cocktail which may have been more on-theme if they’d just called it an Old Fashioned).
As I scanned the bar floor, taking in Butterworth’s exposed rafters, painted brick walls, and wood paneled bar, I spied Franklin holding court at the far end of the venue. She was at the center of a small huddle of women who appeared eager to shake hands with the founder, who is also a rising star in conservative media with multiple Fox News appearances under her belt. She cut a striking image: her waist-length chestnut hair immaculately blown out, her doll-like blue eyes like glass behind feathery black lashes. For the occasion, Franklin wore a navy, floor-length silky slip dress, the bust trimmed in black lace. As I approached to say hello, she flashed her lily-white smile. “Let me know if you need anything at all,” she says.
The bar was beginning to fill up with young women, many of whom sported cocktail dress: short skirts, heels, and a smattering of designer logo bags slung over shoulders. There were one or two women in denim, however they were the outliers among tweed sets, florals, blazers, and shirtdresses. In a calf-length floral slip skirt and black top, paired with a boxy Anine Bing blazer and slingback kitten heels, I felt modest by comparison.
I caught up with two women, who happened to be in conversation about their matching looks. One, it turned out, was a reporter. The other, who preferred not to be identified and for the purposes of this piece I’ll call her Amanda, works in DC. But before we can get further than introductions, she’s whisked off by two young men who offer to accompany her to the bar, which is now surrounded by a wall of thirsty patrons packed three-Republicans deep.
By 8:15, the venue appeared to be nearing capacity. Many guests, I soon learned, had traveled much further than I had from New York for the sold-out event. A woman named Britt Allen, the marketing director for an organization called Right on Crime, is a full-time Texas resident. A man named Link Lauren, who, according to his Instagram profile, is a regular Newsmax contributor, told me he lives “part-time in Wyoming.” And then there were the guests who had no ties to politics, who fell into the category of “devoted fans” of the The Conservateur brand. Two women in their early 20s—excited to bump shoulders with conservative media’s rising stars—flew in from Tallahassee, Florida, and had plans to sightsee around D.C. the following day.
Just before 9 p.m., Caroline Downey, The Conservateur’s editor in chief, stepped up onto a teetering cocktail table, where she thanked her guests and described the publication’s mission as it compares to “other” women’s magazines.
“The problem is, they’re glamorizing bad ideas,” she tells the crowd. “They’re glamourizing evil. What The Conservateur is doing, is we’re highlighting what is objectively beautiful—lifestyle—[an] objectively superior worldview, and we’re giving those unrecognized women in the culture their due.”
The speech is over as quickly as it began, allowing me to return to my conversation with Reagan Reese, a White House correspondent for the Daily Caller, a publication co-founded by right-wing commentator/broadcaster Tucker Carlson.
“I covered the Biden White House, and I also covered the Trump White House, what I’m doing right now,” she explains. “And the Biden White House—the bar for fashion was very low. I could wear slacks, sweaters, I’m good to go.”
“I walked in on my first day of the Trump White House,” Reese continues, “and [the women] are all wearing really beautiful dresses and they have their tights on and their high heels and you don’t see sneakers.”
“Is it my personal opinion that I think it’s more classy and elegant? Probably.”
Reese goes on to echo Franklin’s point about beauty as an objective truth. She’s a graduate of Hillsdale College, a conservative Christian university, which she points to as something of a moral compass. “At least at Hillsdale, we are focused very much on the good, the true, and the beautiful. And I think beautiful things last for a very long time.”
Downey is in the middle of sharing her outfit details with a curious guest when I stop her to ask a few questions. (Her cotton-candy pink bodycon minidress, dotted with tear-shaped beads that look almost like crystals, is from The Wolf Gang, she says.)
Downey seems less guarded than the other members of The Conservateur’s team, and without hesitation we dive into a conversation about conservative aesthetics—specifically, cosmetic “tweakments” like filler, Botox, and other minimally invasive procedures.
“There’s obviously this trend toward more holistic health and detoxing our bodies of chemicals,” she says. “And I think plastic surgery is probably one of the last things to go for the Make America Healthy Again movement, because there’s a big confidence boost that comes with it.”
“It’s a hard pill for some to swallow,” she adds. “It’s a hard pill for me to swallow, and I’m not doing anything crazy.”
Returning to the speech she gave earlier in the night, I ask her to elaborate on differences she sees between fashion and beauty coverage of more mainstream media outlets and The Conservateur. Is there really a difference between liberal and conservative style?
“I think [liberals] have unfortunately fallen into the trap of letting the narrative run that liberal style means ugliness,” she says. “I think that’s kind of what has taken hold of the culture. Even Vogue has kind of let some of their standards down.”
She continues, “And then Melania is freaking fabulous, gorgeous in every way. Slam dunk. She’s a supermodel. She deserved a cover in Vogue [as First Lady], and she never got it.”
As the party appeared to be winding down, I finally found a quiet corner to chat with Amanda, and she starts telling me about an encounter she had at the bar: “There were two guys who were joking that women should not have the right to vote. And I got very, very angry.”
Amanda is an outlier at this party in more ways than just her more casual outfit. She tells me she didn’t buy a ticket, but was invited through a friend. And when I bring up the idea of a conservative aesthetic, she rolls her eyes. “I think women can be Republican and not do the conservative aesthetic sort of thing, where they have their entire makeup done and their hair done and their extensions done, with a trucker hat on,” she says. (Notably, a table of hot pink, Make America Hot Again trucker hats are on display near the entrance. They’re available for purchase—$45 each.)
I reference what some of the other women have told me throughout the evening, that they see doing their hair and makeup as one way to show respect for the institution of which they are a part.
“I do care…I do care about how I look,” she caveats. She takes a moment to compose her thoughts, before explaining why she takes umbrage with the politics of hair and makeup, specifically on the Hill. “Men in general are so incredibly disrespectful,” she says. “So they think that you are this certain person because you care about your hair or your makeup.”
“Women are awful, too, like the worst,” she continues. “And the more that you look like you care about how you look, the worse you’re going to be treated, and the less seriously you’re going to be taken.”
Two hours into the party, this is the first I’ve heard of sexism as it relates to the conservative aesthetic—what it’s like to live a life in the body of a woman who exemplifies the objective beauty that The Conservateur’s founders are so keen to celebrate. In a way, it reminds me of the double-edged sword that feminists have so often lamented—a damned if you do, damned if you don’t standard that applies only to women, both in and outside of the workplace.
When we speak more specifically about the pageantry of the women in the Trump White House, Amanda doesn’t hold back against her fellow Republicans. “It’s really overdone. And it kind of makes me sad for the party, that we’re presenting ourselves in this sort of light,” she says.
Taking a look around the room, she adds, “There’s girls in the shortest dresses, and their hair’s all done. I literally woke up from a nap then came here—which is not the best thing to say out loud—but I think it’s taking away from the actual policy and substance of the policy that’s important. And it’s kind of careless of these women—and men—to be this sort of image that usually isn’t attainable.”
She adds, “I think they’re putting their focus on the wrong thing.”
The post The Women Who Want to Make America Hot Again appeared first on Glamour.
