Florida first lady Casey DeSantis’ wardrobe choices have been drawing notice for a while, and now that her husband Ron is officially running for president, The New York Times is paying attention. Fashion critic Vanessa Friedman dedicated around 2,000 words and a whole lot of pictures to try and figure out what is going on. And yet the volume of words didn’t stop her from missing a lot.
This is a subject with so much to be said, yet Friedman rarely went beyond the most glaringly obvious points: Casey DeSantis dresses strategically, seeking to invoke figures like iconic former first lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Melania Trump, and Catherine, Princess of Wales. Coming from the chief fashion critic of The New York Times, it wasn’t unreasonable to hope for something that wasn’t glaringly obvious even to observers with zero interest in fashion.
The piece is furthermore in line with the generally positive coverage Ron DeSantis and those associated with him continue to get, with Friedman writing, in the second paragraph, “Ms. DeSantis, 42, a former television news anchor, mother of three and breast cancer survivor, has demonstrated a facility with the power of the visual statement, and the way it can tap into the national hive mind, that has been as strategic, and big picture, as that of any political spouse in modern memory.”
That’s one way to put it. Another way to put it is that Casey DeSantis has taken “dress for the job you want, not the job you have” to an extreme, and has been dressing as if she was not only already the first lady of the United States, but as if she was the first lady of the United States at an event one or two degrees more formal than any event she is actually attending at any given time. For example, on election night 2022, she was dressed as if for an inaugural ball or perhaps the evening gown competition in a pageant, in yellow and shiny gold floor-length ruching and dramatic hair. Melania Trump was more restrained on Jan. 20, 2017.
Friedman notes DeSantis’ election night dress, gently suggesting it was a little over the top, then goes on to this:
It was her outfit on inauguration day in January, however, that really foreshadowed the couple’s ambitions in the public eye: a mint-green dress by Alex Perry, an Australian label, with a built-in cape flowing from the shoulders, worn with white gloves. In its color and line, it seemed to draw its lineage straight from the Kennedy era. This was only compounded by the bright pink dress Ms. DeSantis wore to her husband’s State of the State address, with a portrait neckline and more white gloves, another seeming nod to Jacqueline Kennedy, one of the most recognizable, revered and stylish first ladies in American history. Ditto the ice-blue dress she wore to accompany Mr. DeSantis to Japan, another caped style, this time with floral epaulets at the shoulders.
It’s a smart move, even if it can also seem like a cliché (clichés are clichés, after all, because they are part of common parlance). As Michael LaRosa, a communications strategist who was Jill Biden’s spokesman during her husband’s 2020 primary campaign for the White House, said: “Americans love glitz, glamour and attractiveness, celebrities and TV. Casey DeSantis understands all of that.”
It’s a smart move if DeSantis wants everyone to look at her and say “Hey, she’s costumed as Jackie Kennedy.” (Or as many have started calling her, “Tacky O.”) It’s a less smart move if she wants people to think of her as first-lady material without immediately identifying the specific drag performance she’s engaged in. Take away the formal white gloves and it moves from costume to a mere heavy-handed attempt at evoking a glamorous historical figure. Even without the elbow-length gloves, DeSantis would have been overdressed for her husband’s 2023 State of the State address, wearing a hot pink, off-the-shoulder satin dress while everyone around her looked like they’d come from the office. But she might have managed not to look like she was getting ready to film a period piece.
It’s not just Jackie Kennedy. Friedman gets at another of DeSantis’ constant reference points, writing, “Like Catherine, Princess of Wales, Ms. DeSantis is adept at color-coordinating the couple’s young children for their public appearances, the better to present a snapshot of family unity: the two little girls wearing matching dresses and pinafores, their brother echoing their father.” Perhaps Republican voters want to set up an imitation royal family—certainly the Trumps occasionally acted like that—but again, DeSantis is taking things past a subliminal invocation of her models and straight into “Oh, look at the people pretending to be the royals.”
The looking-like-a-princess ambition has apparently been with DeSantis for some time. In one of her more critical passages, Friedman writes:
[I]n his book Mr. DeSantis notes that it was Ms. DeSantis who asked him to wear his naval “dress white uniform” for their wedding, complete with all his medals, though he had planned on wearing a tux.She also held an on-air competition, he wrote, so viewers could vote on what wedding dress she should wear. When it came time to walk down the aisle, Mr. DeSantis wrote, she looked “less like a TV anchor and more like a princess.” Together, however, they looked like nothing so much as cosplay from the triumphant finales of both “An Officer and a Gentleman” and “A Few Good Men.”
British royals, of course, also marry in military uniforms with lots of medals. Ron and Casey were married at the Grand Floridian, a turreted Disney hotel (ironic, huh?) that bears a passing resemblance to a palace.
Friedman’s most critical omission, though, is the transition DeSantis made from trying to look like a Trump to seeking other models. She flags a red caped dress DeSantis wore in 2022 that echoed Melania Trump’s 2019 red caped dress for a dinner with the then-Prince Charles in London, but uses it to contrast DeSantis’ comparatively affordable wardrobe choices (choices that are not cheap by most people’s standards, and are likely what DeSantis can afford, more than an effort to seem relatable).
But Friedman flubs why Casey mimicked that dress, and it has everything to do with chronology.
Yet Ms. DeSantis also chose a label for her official portrait — Chiara Boni La Petite Robe — that is the unofficial uniform of the women of Trumpland, a favorite of Lara Trump, Kimberly Guilfoyle, Kayleigh McEnany and Jeanine Pirro, thanks to its ability to play to both boss lady and the male gaze. All of which underscores her husband’s pitch that he is the palatable alternative to Trump: familiar, but less baggage.
That official portrait was in 2019. DeSantis and her husband were, at that point, fully on board with Team Trump, whatever their longer-term ambitions. Her message wasn’t, “My husband is a more electable Trump.” Rather, she was aligning herself and her husband with powerful figures in their party. Similarly, in October 2018, the dress she wore to her husband’s second gubernatorial debate had an off-the-shoulder neckline strongly echoing that of Melania Trump’s inaugural ball dress. Once her husband’s relationship with Trump soured, Casey moved away from trying to look like a Trump woman.
What’s consistent is that Casey DeSantis wants to look like a first lady. It’s just which one that changes depending on her husband’s political ambitions and allegiances. Republican primary voters may be won over with these blatant Jackie Kennedy/Kate Middleton knockoffs, but for a fashion critic to paint this level of obviousness as uniquely strategic is embarrassing for Friedman and the Times.
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