Amid the kids dressed up like Harry Potter, dragons and Disney princesses at the White House Halloween celebration on Thursday, framed by the pumpkins and wheat sheaves spilling down the steps of the South Portico, two particular ensembles stood out: those of President Trump and the first lady, Melania Trump. Not because the hosts were outfitted as anything particularly ghoulish or fantastical, but because they weren’t. They were dressed up as themselves.
Costume or couture? In this administration, they are pretty much the same thing.
As the Trumps handed out wicker baskets of candy and the U.S. Air Force Strolling Strings band played Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” and tunes from “Game of Thrones” and “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” Mr. Trump wore his usual flag-adjacent blue suit (with American flag lapel pin), white shirt, red tie and USA 45-47 red baseball cap.
Mrs. Trump wore one of her signature military-esque coats, this time a heathery wool Marni number buttoned up to just under her chin and tightly cinched with a thick belt. The coat was made seasonally appropriate with orange leather trim down the front and on the pockets. No stockings, but matching Manolo Blahnik high-heel pumps, her long hair cascading over her shoulders and curled just so at the ends.
They looked like nothing so much as their own avatars.
The lack of spooky first family get-up is not unusual. There have been presidential attempts to engage with creative holiday wardrobing in the past — the Carters donned black Zorro masks in 1978; Bill and Hillary Clinton went as James and Dolley Madison in 1995; and Michelle Obama wore a leopard look and cat’s ears in 2009 — but most presidential couples tend to stick to their usual working gear.
You can understand it. Dressing like a furry animal or a friendly ghost has the potential to humanize the first couple and make them seem potentially relatable. See, for example, the most Halloween-happy first lady, Jill Biden, who hosted the White House Halloween as a butterfly, complete with wings, in 2022; as her cat, Willow, in 2023, with pointy little ears, a tail and whiskers; and as a giant panda in a full-body onesie in 2024. But the spectacle is probably outweighed by the potential for public ridicule and meme-making, not to mention pundits declaiming that such antics debase a serious office.
(Wearing his usual presidential gear did not help Mr. Trump avoid this outcome entirely. Social media simply resorted to jokes about horror not being necessary since everything was already a horror show.)
What is striking about the Trumps is that in dressing so consistently, they have essentially become their own archetypes. Their style is now recognizable with merely a glance. And what is that but the definition of costume? Or “an outfit worn to create the appearance characteristic of a particular period, person, place or thing,” according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary.
It’s no accident that for a time Trump costumes were some of the most popular Halloween costumes of the season. All that was needed was a blue suit, white shirt and red tie, perhaps topped by a blond wig. You didn’t even need a mask as with other presidential costumes — Richard Nixon or Ronald Reagan, say — because the outfit itself was so identifiable, and easily adoptable.
Pointedly, however, the Trump costume craze seemed to have peaked in 2016 and 2017, when the hockey star Connor McDavid received some blowback for his Trump Halloween incarnation. It has been decreasing ever since, in tandem with the rise of people dressing like the president in real life, including most members of the cabinet and many Republicans in Congress. Dressing like Mr. Trump is now less a party prank than a sign of allegiance.
And just as Mr. Trump has become a sort of MAGA emoji, the first lady has become the prototype of a specific kind of femininity, with her long, carefully tousled hair, high heels and protected, but body-aware, dressing. Those are all tropes that have been widely adopted by a number of women in the administration, including Kristi Noem, Lindsey Halligan, Karoline Leavitt and Alina Habba.
Some might call it spooky.
Vanessa Friedman has been the fashion director and chief fashion critic for The Times since 2014.
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