Believe it or not: Being FLOTUS for a day is hard

In a Daily Mail experiment, Bryony Gordon donned Melania Trump’s iconic ‘The Hat, The Scowl and The Coat’ with a Trump lookalike causing a selfie frenzy everywhere they went. Power, it seems, starts in the wardrobe.

Power of absenceForget the trapped-wife myth. Gordon says pitying Melania “misses a valuable opportunity” to grasp her influence. Her “icy cold stares” hit because she “bothers to show up at all.” Strategic silence and selective visibility make detachment her sharpest weapon.Fashion as psychological warfareMelania’s fashion isn’t decorative — it’s defensive. Her infamous hat is, as Gordon write: “The millinery equivalent of a barbed-wire fence,” while her Burberry trench creates “an expensive wall.” Add the signature scowl and Gordon finds the look doesn’t just repel affection, it actively changes behaviour.