Sometimes a jacket is just a jacket, as Freud would say.
But what about a hat?
You might remember the uproar Melania Trump caused when she wore a $ 39 jacket, probably the only cheap schmatta in her couture wardrobe, while traveling to a children’s detention center in 2018. On the back was stamped: “REALLY NO? DO YOU CARE, YOU? ”
Could it have been a coded message? It seemed that way at a time when #FreeMelania was a meme that went viral amid a (mostly) prankster swell on social media that had the First Lady imprisoned in the White House.
His communications staff issued a statement insisting that “there was no hidden message.” Except that Mrs. Trump herself denied that claim when she gave an interview to ABC. “It was kind of a message, yes. It was for the people and the left-wing media that are criticizing me. I want to show them that I don’t care. You could criticize what you want to say. But that won’t stop me from doing what I feel is right. “
More often, the former model had nothing to say about anything. It was a designer dress mannequin on her husband’s arm, except on those occasions when he slapped her hand away.
Now, in what is her first foray back into the public sphere as First Lady, Melania is auctioning … a hat.
A “masterpiece of white headgear,” according to the press release, the symmetrical wide-brimmed cap was commissioned from French-American designer Herve Pierre. Melania wore it during the Trump administration’s first official state visit by a foreign head of state to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte. The couples had visited the National Gallery of Art the day the hat was untied.
“The Head of State Collection” commemorates this supposedly historical event.
Who knew there was a “Head of State Collection”?
Famous people often give their iconic rags to the auctioneer’s hammer for charity. Princess Diana auctioned 79 “work” dresses, mostly dresses, in 1979, raising $ 2 million to benefit the causes of cancer and AIDS.
Melania Trump, a former White House Castilian, is also doing the Lady Bountiful thing. A “portion” of the proceeds from the online auction, announced this week, will go toward computer and technology scholarships for people who have been in foster care. How much of a proportion? I’m not saying. Ms. Trump’s office has not responded to my email inquiry.
She is also auctioning off an original watercolor of herself wearing the hat and an NFT (or digital rendering) by the same artist. Non-fungible tokens, the latest crypto phenomenon to go mainstream, are unique data stored in a digital ledger. Simply put, NFTs transform digital works of art and other collectibles that could easily be reproduced into one-of-a-kind verifiable digital assets. All the rage. Analytics platform DappRadar reported that NFT volume generated more than $ 23 billion in trade volume in 2021.
This is not Melania Trump’s first foray into the world of digital finance. Late last year, she introduced a limited edition of NFT, “Melania’s Vision,” featuring an illustration of her eyes.
The weird part: this auction is not held in dollars, but in cryptocurrencies. Specifically, SOL, the currency of the Solana Blockchain platform.
Why Ms. Trump is apparently a slave to cryptocurrencies is a mystery. He studied architecture and art before dropping out of the University of Ljubljana, but he is not known to have nurtured a secret interest in high finance, he has never gambled, at least not as the record shows. But he probably absorbed some knowledge or fascination with marital osmosis, with Donald Trump flaunting his negotiating genius. (Nonsense! Many of their businesses have gone bankrupt.)
Is Melania feeling the pinch? Maybe taking steps to avoid a potential hit to your husband’s wallet? Forbes recently estimated that former President Donald Trump’s debts now total $ 1.3 billion, $ 738 million due in the next three years. Not to mention the heap of legal bills you’re piling up, dodging lawsuits, civil cases, and criminal investigations.
A 2020 book by Washington Post reporter Mary Jordan, “The Art of Her Deal: The Untold Story of Melania Trump,” claimed that one of the reasons she delayed her move from New York City to Washington was that he was renegotiating his prenuptial agreement. . (He was also calming down after media disclosures about the president’s alleged extramarital affairs.) You surely won’t be searching through the jumble at Value Village.
As Helaine Olen writes in The Washington Post, speculating on Melania’s seemingly nascent fascination with finances: “Maybe she spends her free time reading about investing. Perhaps it is a passive-aggressive move against her husband, who called Bitcoin a ‘scam’ and said that cryptocurrencies are ‘a disaster waiting to happen.
And the man knows about disasters, orchestrating quite a few himself.
They were a couple of scammers in the White House, you know.
The initial bid for Ms. Hustler’s hat is set at $ 250,000.
Reference-www.thestar.com