J.D. Vance, the newly nominated vice-presidential candidate, may represent the new generation of the MAGA movement. But, as became clear Wednesday night when Usha Vance stepped gingerly into the spotlight to introduce her husband at the Republican convention, his wife represents change of a different kind.
That is not because she is a Yale-educated lawyer with three children, or the daughter of two Indian immigrants. It’s because she does not hew to the very specific mold of femininity that has become the norm in the world of Trump.
After all, there is a certain kind of look that the women in Mr. Trump’s closest orbit — his wife, daughters and daughters-in-law — all share, and that has become a defining gender trope in his own political reality show.
It involves a lot of hair, often left to cascade in glossy, carefully controlled Breck girl waves. It involves heavy mascara (or false eyelashes), lip gloss and vertiginous heels. It often involves a brightly colored sheath dress. It calls to mind a cross between a Miss America — or Miss Universe — pageant contestant and a Fox newscaster. It is the equivalent of the Palm Beach billionaire take on the trad wife (even if these wives also have work). It looks as if it requires a lot of effort to maintain.
See, for example, last night’s Trump family speaker, Kimberly Guilfoyle, the fiancée of Donald Trump Jr. Ms. Guilfoyle took to the stage to rouse the crowd in a scarlet dress and spike heels, brown hair flowing down to frame her heavily made-up face as she cried: “We will restore an era of national pride where freedom of speech is respected and cancel culture is ended. Where high school girls only compete with other girls, not biological men.”
And then consider Ms. Vance.
When she walked onstage Wednesday evening, she did so in little makeup — almost no eye shadow, no visible lipstick.
She did not wear a bedazzled American flag pin to demonstrate her patriotism, as many other female speakers have done, or any real jewelry at all. Her shoulder-length black hair, with its visible streaks of gray, kept falling in front of one eye until she casually tucked it behind her ear. She did wear a sapphire blue dress, one with origami-like folds at the neckline that squared one shoulder and left the other bare, and her sandals had heels, but they were square and medium height.
The dress was elegant, but not identifiably designer. The effect was appropriate, but also no-nonsense. She looked like someone who had other things on her mind than dress (like maybe how much her life is about to change) and wasn’t all that interested in devoting a big chunk of time to catering to the male gaze. You could imagine her before the event, looking at her closet and exercising her own judgment about what seemed right.
Before the speech, Joanna Coles, writing in The Daily Beast, had speculated on whether, between Monday’s announcement that Mr. Trump had chosen Mr. Vance as his running mate and Wednesday’s coronation, Ms. Vance would get a MAGA makeover, the way Sarah Huckabee Sanders had when Ms. Sanders became Mr. Trump’s press secretary. After all, Ms. Vance’s first appearance at the convention on Monday, in a taupe dress that practically disappeared into the background and flat shoes, was so counter to the prevailing Trump aesthetic that it was startling. And she does not have a lengthy record of dressing for the public eye.
The rare photos of her until now suggest someone who isn’t particularly interested in using her clothes to attract attention, but rather to effectively get her through the day. In 2022, when Mr. Vance won his primary race for Senate, Ms. Vance wore a cherry red midi-dress; on election night later that year, a gray shirtdress with a floral print; and in one campaign ad, a scoop-neck blue top. She looked, in all cases, as if she was not that fussed about fashion. Just, as she has said, she is not that fussed about politics.
As she stepped into her role as a potential second lady, would that change? Would she arrive in big pearls in her ears and falsies on her eyes?
No. She arrived as herself. That may seem minor, but in a campaign that prizes the visual message and is trying to position itself as a broader tent, one in which her husband’s political consistency is under scrutiny, it is a statement in itself. When Mr. Vance walked out from the wings to join her, they gave each other a long, extended hug.
In each case, it made for a notable change.
