Led by their stylish first lady, the trendsetting women of America are doing what Volodymyr Zelensky can’t: wearing neckties.
Melania Trump showed up to Capitol Hill this week wearing a tailored three-piece camel suit with a slim black tie. Lately, the neckwear has also shown up on runways, red carpets, and even on the queen of Spain.
The necktie is “2025’s Most Talked-About Accessory Trend” for women, according to WhoWhatWear, and L’Officiel calls it “2025’s Must-Have Accessory.” It’s typically accompanied by broad-shouldered suits, like the hourglass-shaped tuxedo Melania wore for her official White House portrait (sans tie, though with a white collared shirt).
You’d be forgiven for comparing the trend to the pantsuit girlbossery of the aughts. The critics at Air Mail think it’s an “attempt to wrest back control” in “our Trumpian age of misogyny.” (They didn’t explain how their theory squares with Mrs. Trump’s fondness for it.) Are women returning to the era of Hillary Clinton, workwear-as-clubwear, and leaning in?
Partly because of the excess of fabric, the suit-and-tie combos cropping up seem to be descended more from 1980s power-dressing than from the urban main characters of 2000s rom-coms. It’s no secret that 80s golden-age maximalism is back, and not just politically.
Exhibit A: At this year’s Golden Globes, Ayo Edebiri’s outfit — though horrendously executed — was an obvious throwback to Julia Roberts’ suit and tie at the 1990s ceremony.
In recent years, the pendulum swing from the era of low-rise jeans and cutouts led women to “cottagecore” and girly cuts and fabrics that emphasized their femininity and even modesty. From there, the “coastal grandmother” and “old money” obsessions had women dressing even more conservatively. The resurgence of menswear is part of that continuing swing away from the hypersexualization of women.
Of course, menswear — and particularly neckties — can be challenging to pull off without looking like a lesbian or a prep school co-ed. In Melania’s case, her neckwear was more of a hybrid between a tie and a twilly silk scarf, far from the wide, red, Windsor-knotted ties that are her husband’s signature. That, combined with the feminine cut and soft color of her Ralph Lauren suit, made it work in a way that wasn’t too costumey.
She’s worn an identical-looking tie before, including in this legendary ensemble:
But it’s also possible to make even the wide ties and less tailored suits work, with the right treatment. Women have been doing it successfully (and unsuccessfully) at least since Katherine Hepburn donned trousers. It worked fabulously for Hepburn and Roberts, partly because they’re both unusually beautiful and accessorized the masculine style with feminine curls and defined waists. It also helped that the societies they lived in weren’t particularly confused about the differences between boys and girls!
While promoting her movie “A Complete Unknown” in December, Elle Fanning channeled Hepburn and Roberts — and it worked because the softness of her blonde waves and youthful facial features both counteract the masculine cut. (The shortness of the tie and defined waistline also help, accentuating the ultimate feminine accessory: legs.) Mikey Madison’s feminine blowout and accessories here, paired with a thinner, more casual tie, do similar lifting.
The secret is, menswear looks wonderfully sexy on women when it looks like you borrowed it from your boyfriend or stole it from your dad’s closet. There’s a reason women look and feel great in oversized T-shirts. And what woman doesn’t love the feeling of draping her date’s blazer over her delicate gown because she forgot to bring a sweater to dinner?
We love the juxtaposition of the ultrafeminine with something borrowed from the men. There’s a reason the aforementioned oversized T-shirt pairs so well with bouncy curls and a bikini, and the angular blazer looks so good wrapped around shoulders that are otherwise femininely appointed. It adds an air of down-to-earth levity that looks lived-in.
This is also why Roberts’ look works while Edebiri’s doesn’t. While the tailoring and high button on Roberts’ jacket preserve a feminine silhouette, the texture of her jacket is much more relaxed. Contrast that with the weave and sheen of Edebiri’s coat, which, paired with a flat gray dress shirt, screams “I got this in the men’s section at Express.”
Hailey Bieber provides another example of how not to wear a tie. Photographed with her husband in Los Angeles, her slicked-back hair, four-sizes-too-big slacks, and V-shaped silhouette make her look much more masculine and costumed than Trump, Roberts, and Fanning. The ensemble is made especially bad by the contrast in style and body language between Hailey and her husband, dressed in baggy jeans and hiding behind her. Who needs the green line theory when clothes make it so obvious?
Bieber is cosplaying as a man. On Roberts, Fanning, and Trump, on the other hand, the blunt contrast of masculine shapes and fabrics is carefully balanced with feminine features to emphasize the wearer’s womanhood. It’s more cheeky and self-aware than try-hard — more, “I’m so beautiful and feminine, I can wear a man’s clothes and still look sexy!” and less “I’m like a man but in heels.”
Pulling off such an ensemble successfully requires understanding the differences between the masculine and feminine, and letting those differences complement each other instead of pitting them against each other.
Maybe society should try that with real men and women sometime!
Elle Purnell is the elections editor at The Federalist. Her work has been featured by Fox Business, RealClearPolitics, the Tampa Bay Times, and the Independent Women’s Forum. She received her B.A. in government from Patrick Henry College with a minor in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @_ellepurnell.
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