Clothes Make the Movement
What Trump World is Wearing in GQ
你好 from Taiwan, where I am figuring out this whole tariff situation on behalf of you, the consumer.
It’s my first time in GQ today, where I got to write on perhaps one of my favorite topics in the semiotics of clothing. I got a late start in reading even baseline postmodern philosophy because most of my college years were spent drinking as much as possible in a frat house and getting B’s in geography. But my brain got cracked open reading Baudrillard for the first time a few years ago, and now I can’t stop thinking about what people choose to wear and what it signals about their political philosophies and social backgrounds.
Nowhere is that clearer than in politics, where clothing might as well be part of the stump speech. Typically, that manifests in a sort of uniform based on prevailing political currents. But in Trump World those messages are all scrambled, since there are a dozen would-be powerbrokers vying for supremacy while The Big Boss controls everything. That’s what this entire surveying essay is about. Give it a read and let me know what you think.
When he had the DC hotel, there was a Brioni shop in the lobby. I was there every night for a little while and I never saw anybody even glance at it except the occasional upscale nightlady looking for a john
Gah, I wrote about the Brioni connection for a now-defunct website, but the embrace of Brioni seems to have saved the house; they were struggling, appointed son-of-an-aussi-coal-miner/heavily tatted influencer Justin O'Shea as creative director to revitalize the brand. He, in turn, made Metallica brand ambassadors and then left at the election. Felt meaningful, though coincidental, to see that crossover happen when it did.