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How do Melania Trump and Jill Biden’s FLOTUS styles compare? Jill champions US designers and cancer research while Melania gave us the Zara jacket controversy and Be Best campaign
STORYAgence France-Presse
- On the day Donald Trump left the White House and Joe Biden entered it, Melania sported a black Chanel jacket while Jill wore a vibrant blue Markarian outfit
- Jill has also chosen to support deeply personal causes, including aiding military families; her late son Beau was a veteran
The backdrop of flowers, teapot and US flag said it all: Jill Biden will be no Melania Trump as America’s new first lady.
Where Donald Trump’s ex-model wife cut a flashy but often distant figure, Jill’s appearance on a Zoom “virtual tea” party last week with military spouses affirmed her image as a down-to-earth, traditional FLOTUS.
“It’s hard for me to believe it’s only been two weeks since the inauguration and already I’ve had so much to do,” she said.
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As different to Melania as her husband President Joe Biden is to Donald Trump, Jill drew on her own military roots and middle class American upbringing to connect with others on the video call.
“I learned my love of this country from my dad,” Jill, 69, said, recalling the ritual of accompanying her veteran father to a war memorial.
At a later event to support the National Cancer Institute, she again underlined her experience with the realities of ordinary life, as she recounted cancer taking the lives of her parents and then her son Beau at just 46 years old.
Melania, who came from Slovenia to the United States as a young immigrant model and met Donald Trump, perhaps had a dramatic American story of her own. But a private nature held her back from sharing it. She rarely spoke at length in public and even less so in unscripted situations, unlike Jill, an accomplished public speaker.
Instead, Melania’s extravagant clothing often got the real attention.
This included the all black Chanel, Dolce & Gabbana and Christian Louboutin ensemble worn on departing the White House for the last time in January. By the time she landed in Florida, she’d switched into a colourful Gucci dress worth thousands of dollars – still, as was widely noted, sticking to foreign designers.