It is rather bizarre how in our times fiction can become incredibly similar to reality, while real events look distorted, almost seen through a surreal filter.
Take The Handmaid's Tale: Episode 9 (Series 2) showed Commander Waterford visiting Canada and being almost welcomed upon his arrival with Serena. Yet, after letters from handmaids are anonymously published online, Waterford is briskly asked to leave, but before he does so he offends the PMO representative, calling him a coward. The episode was broadcast just a few days after Donald Trump's visit to Canada for the G7, where his first meetings started in a formal tone, but ended in a mess, with the US President calling Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau a liar who made "false statements" about Canada-U.S. trade.
This week in the same series we were confronted by a temporary reunion as June was briefly allowed to see her daughter Hannah from whom she had been cruelly separated at the beginning of the series. As the mother and child get separated again in a heartbreaking scene, it is difficult not to think about the children separated from their families at borders in accordance with the immigration policy of Trump administration. Even though on Wednesday, the US president signed an executive order that now allows more families to remain together while being detained, the fate of more than 2,000 kids separated from their parents and dispersed across the country is yet to be decided.
But if fiction seems to address reality through tragic parallelisms, Melania Trump became instead yesterday the protagonist of a rather bizarre episode, something worthy of a dystopian fiction series.
The First Lady went to a Texas border detention centre to pay a visit to immigrant children who entered the country illegally and had been separated from their parents. Mrs. Trump boarded a plane at Andrews Air Force Base in a $39 army green hooded jacket by fast fashion brand Zara. Well, that was an improvement, you may say, compared to the inappropriate super high Manolo stilettos she chose last year to visit the Hurricane Harvey victims.
Even though this was a rather unusual choice compared to her extremely expensive wardrobe, the real problem was that the jacket featured on the back a painted slogan in the punk fashion that read, "I really don't care, do u?", the sort of graffitied message teenagers may angrily scribble on a T-shirt/jacket to rebel against school rules.
The social media were immediately on fire, especially after we collectively realised the slogan hadn't been sprayed on the jacket by a sarcastic graffiti artist while Melania had her back turned.
So, what did she mean? She didn't care about the children, even though on Sunday she issued a rare public statement that said she hated seeing children separated from their families and hoped "both sides of the aisle can finally come together to achieve successful immigration reform"?
Or maybe she didn't care about her husband, his policies or his critics? Or was it a message against his tweets or his ridiculously unhealthy diet? Maybe it was a subtle message to her stylist Hervé Pierre (who denied to the media he had ever seen the jacket before) or to Zara (like in "I don't care if you make your clothes in a sweatshop, I'm still going to wear them")?
The First Lady's communications director, Stephanie Grisham, hastily explained to the media in a statement issued on Thursday: "It's a jacket. There was no hidden message. After today's important visit to Texas, I hope this isn't what the media is going to choose to focus on" (Yes, unfortunately for you we all did...).
The US President himself joined the row on Twitter (where else?), reappropriating the debate and claiming: "I REALLY DON'T CARE, DO U? written on the back of Melania's jacket, refers to the Fake News Media. Melania has learned how dishonest they are, and she truly no longer cares!" (Yes, let him believe what he wants).
Melania, the first member of the Trump family to visit the border with Mexico since the debate about the administration's separation policy, spent 75 minutes at the Upbring New Hope Children's Shelter, chatted with some of the children there (most of whom are from Guatemala) and then left, wishing some of them "Good luck". She seemed to be wearing the jacket upon boarding the plane to and from Texas, but she removed it while visiting the shelter.
So what to make about the infamous Zara jacket? Well, usually a fashion commentator looks for hidden meanings in a garment (what did that celebrity try to say with that colour of dress on the red carpet? and what about the immaculately tailored suit donned by that head of state, that's certainly about power, isn't it?), here there was nothing incredibly conceptual or obscure to decode - Melania simply doesn't care.
Yet we all tried to look for the reasons behind this faux pas that could be considered as equally bad as wearing a luxurious real fur coat an an anti-fur rally. Supporters of Trump will claim Melania is on same side as her husband; haters will say Robo Melania is turning into Serena Joy out of The Handmaid's Tale – desperately wanting to be a good person, but gradually turning into a sadistic b*tch; optimists will instead state she is the good one in the evil White House and add she is proving she's free to rebel and do what she likes.
Who knows, maybe Melania is an understated genius (after all, she was a model so she wouldn't pick her clothes carelessly, even though the Manolos were definitely a major faux pas...). We would have to ask her what she meant, but we don't know if Robo Melania would be available or if she is kept in a cupboard with her clothes.
For this week, though, the jacket was a great diversion, a cheap yet globally powerful weapon of mass distraction from more serious issues, proving that fashion, even cheap and fast-fashion - when decontextualised and recontextualised - can (sadly) be incredibly powerful.
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