Vanity Fair Author Trashes MAGA Figures for–Wearing Clothes

Vanity Fair published a hit piece on Wednesday targeting the MAGA movement — not for its policies or beliefs, but for its fashion choices.

Author Robin Givhan wrote a 1,500+ word op-ed bemoaning the clothing that allies of President Donald Trump choose to wear at various events.

To start with, she recounts attending a luncheon at the home of a prominent foreign official and described with horror, the fact that conservatives were in attendance — wearing clothes!

“Inching forward, I scanned the group of women making their way inside the residence,” she writes. “The scene looked familiar and discomforting. Dresses dominated. Heels were high. The makeup was matte. Hair was expertly sprayed into place. MAGA was in the air. It was as if its concentrated form of femininity had pushed official Washington backward in time, as if an entire era of fashion never happened, as if decades of progress in the way women are expected to present themselves had evaporated.” 

MAGA is a style rooted in extremes. It is hostile to nuance and diversity. It views body positivity as a sign of weakness—but regards the president’s puffy, aging body through an exceptionally kind lens. And it believes gender fluidity is something to be stamped out. “As of… pic.twitter.com/d5hdTCIT4a

— VANITY FAIR (@VanityFair) August 19, 2026

The author goes on to lament the notion that “The MAGA aesthetic has seeped into all the nooks and crannies of the culture as well as here in diplomatic Washington.”

She further notes that one could “easily find the look on the runway in Ronkonkoma, New York, where, in the fall of 2024, conservative women came to admire red-white-and-blue-bedazzled jewelry and skirts depicting the drafting of the Declaration of Independence at the America First Patriotic Designer Showcase.”

The author takes shots at Lauren Sanchez Bezos, wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, for “her devotion to an hourglass silhouette and toe-crunching heels.”

MAGA is a style rooted in extremes. It is hostile to nuance and diversity. It views body positivity as a sign of weakness—but regards the president’s puffy, aging body through an exceptionally kind lens. And it believes gender fluidity is something to be stamped out. “As of today, it will henceforth be the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders: male and female,” Trump said in his second inaugural address.

Then, Givhan makes a leap that could have won her a gold medal in the Olympics’ long jump competition. “If you are a MAGA believer, the aesthetic offers reassuring cultural guardrails,” she writes. “If you are a nonbeliever, the aesthetic is akin to an electrified fence sorting, separating, and punishing those who won’t fall in line.”

Mind you, she got all this just from looking at the dresses women aligned with the MAGA movement wear. Who knew fabric could make such a statement?

Of course, no hit piece against MAGA fashion would be complete without paragraphs upon paragraphs about First Lady Melania Trump who has repeatedly caused meltdowns on the left over her choice of clothing.

First lady Melania Trump sits at the center: her MAGA highness. She is the MAGA woman all others emulate. (The president is the man they all aim to please.) She maintains perfect posture atop her perilous Louboutin heels. Her eye makeup is smoky. The clothes are body-conscious—with the occasional nod to a floppy tradwife sleeve. Her smile is astutely attuned to the location of photographers. Her resting face is one of aggrievement. Mrs. Trump is the template for an aesthetic that has grown to be comical and terrifying, flattening and enraging, old-fashioned and foreboding.

The author goes on to claim the Trump administration promotes “gendered stereotypes and racialized strictures” and is “sending us spiraling back to a time when attractiveness, and by default worth, was measured in the narrowest, whitest terms.”

She adds, “It’s an exaggerated version of nostalgia and respectability.”

Yeah, because racial minorities don’t wear suits and dresses. Brilliant observation, Givhan.

I won’t bore you with the rest of the details. This piece is the type of claptrap that white limousine liberals eat up with the veracity of a starving rottweiler presented with a porterhouse steak.

At no point did this author make any cogent point on the administration. It was nothing more than a fluffier version of a “Mean Girls” diatribe.

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