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    Biden, Obama and Clinton Gather, Tieless, for Campaign Fund-Raiser

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    Did Presidents Biden, Obama and Clinton, appearing together at a fund-raiser in open-neck shirts, look casual or ‘a little disheveled’? Simultaneously historic and perhaps a big nothing, the shot was snapped on Thursday in New York City when President Biden and former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton gathered, before a Democratic fund-raiser, for the taping of “SmartLess,” a podcast hosted by the comedians Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes and Will Arnett.With his beard and rumpled corduroy pants, Mr. Bateman was clearly the odd man out in a group of radiantly healthy alphas dressed in crisp blazers or suits. As one social media quipster put it, Mr. Bateman, the “Arrested Development” star who is soon to appear in a limited series with Jude Law, looked as if he was celebrating his release from the hoosegow. The other dudes were on hand to help cut the cake.It was not Mr. Bateman, though, who generated online buzz with his attire. It was those three presidents appearing without ties. (Messrs. Arnett and Hayes also skipped the neckwear, and as it happened, the three presidents remained without ties straight through the evening’s event.) Were we once again at the precipice, as some commentators seemed to suggest? Was civilization nearing its end? Or were we yet again being reminded of the inexorable march from casual Friday to casual everyday, and to a world in which chief executives dress like field hands and the only people who can be relied on to sport a suit and tie outside a courtroom are bodyguards and limo chauffeurs?Pity the poor tie. Pundits are forever writing its obit. Back in 2022, the doomsayers piled on when, at a G7 summit in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, world leaders including Justin Trudeau, Emmanuel Macron and Boris Johnson “declared the end of the necktie,” according to Women’s Wear Daily, by posing for a group photo in suits and open-neck shirts.World leaders at a G7 summit in Germany in 2022.Susan Walsh/Associated PressWomen’s Wear Daily, citing the pandemic and the corresponding boom in athleisure and active wear, noted that the formal suit — with that sadly diminished phallic accessory, the necktie — “no longer yields the intellect and vim it once did.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Wayne LaPierre: Dapper as Charged

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      His financial misdeeds may have led to conviction, but his extravagant sartorial tastes proved little help to the former N.R.A. chief’s case. You’d think Wayne LaPierre would have read the playbook. After decades in the spotlight, the former chief executive of the National Rifle Association could have been expected to know that, for public figures, conspicuous consumption is always a bad look.This is seldom truer than when sartorial choices come into play. And among the dominant motifs in the reporting and online chatter about Mr. LaPierre’s civil corruption trial were his fashion habits and the unpardonable fact that the face of an organization purporting to speak for the country’s heartland had billed it hundreds of thousands of dollars for suits, many from a luxury boutique in Beverly Hills.Haven’t we been here before? Wasn’t Sarah Palin rudely schooled on the matter back in 2008, when, even as she campaigned alongside Senator John McCain as a champion of blue-collar workers, it was revealed by Politico that staffers shopping for Ms. Palin spent more than $150,000 on clothes and accessories from high-end retailers like Neiman Marcus — in a single month.Long after details evaporated as to why exactly Paul Manafort, who served as chairman of Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, had been sentenced to jail for seven years (tax fraud, bank fraud and conspiracy, to remind), plenty of folks can recall in vivid detail how eagerly the press publicly depantsed the former lobbyist for his unseemly taste in finery.“The poor slob should have known that flagging a taste for expensive clothes always gets you in trouble,” said Amy Fine Collins, a fashion expert as keeper of the International Best Dressed List and an editor at large at Airmail.“Superiority in dress is inherently seen as elitist,’’ Ms. Collins said. “And we know how American feels about elites.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Is Selling Pieces of His Mug Shot Suit

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      It’s not just a piece of political memorabilia — it’s a strategy.When Donald J. Trump walked into a Georgia courthouse on Aug. 24 to be booked as part of his fourth criminal indictment, becoming the first former president (and only current presidential candidate) to have a mug shot taken, the picture seemed destined to become a symbol of this fraught, unprecedented moment in American history. As has become increasingly clear, however, Mr. Trump and his team have come to see the mug shot in a different way.Specifically, as the source material for a new strain of political pop culture mythmaking and memorabilia.Almost overnight they splashed the image, with Mr. Trump’s signature glower, across mugs, T-shirts and posters in their campaign store, using it and all it represents as a key component of their fund-raising. Then, this week, NFT INT, the official licensee of the Trump name and image for digital trading cards, began selling a special “Mugshot Edition” NFT set that includes, for a certain few willing to buy the whole thing, pieces of the blue suit and red tie Mr. Trump wore in the photo.Or, as the NFT INT website calls the garment, “The most historically significant artifact in American history.”The 47 cards on offer were created by the artist Clark Mitchell and depict Mr. Trump as, for example, Captain America, and sitting in for Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial. Cards can be bought individually for $99 or as a full set that runs for $4,653 and includes a physical trading card (some of which will be signed by Mr. Trump) with a swatch of suit fabric and an invitation to a special dinner at Mar-a-Lago. Those who buy 100 of the NFT cards receive a swatch of the jacket or pants, plus a swatch of the tie and the dinner at Mar-a-Lago.According to the NFT INT website, the suit is “priceless.” There are enough tiny suit pieces for 2,024 buyers (because, you know, election year), and enough tie pieces for 225.In other words, it’s not just a suit. It’s a font of potential relics — one that positions the mug shot suit as the most important suit of Mr. Trump’s career so far, rather than, say, Mr. Trump’s inauguration suit.The mug shot edition is just the latest in a series of NFT cards released on the site portraying former President Donald J. Trump.NFT INTThe mug shot edition is the third set of NFT cards released, with the first two drops selling out in “a little more than 24 hours,” according to Kevin Mercuri, a spokesman for NFT INT and the chief executive of Propheta Communications. The new offering comes complete with a video of Mr. Trump endorsing the drop — and the suit — at the top of the web page. Mr. Mercuri said the idea for selling the suit swatches came from NFT INT and was inspired by the way sports figures sell pieces of their jerseys to fans. Mr. Trump was “aware of the trend and receptive” to the proposal, he said, and “generously gave the suit to NFT INT. He felt that members of the public would want to have a piece of history.”The suit was then authenticated by MEARS, a company that specializes in validating sports memorabilia. Troy R. Kinunen, the chief executive of the company, said that “the team at CollectTrumpCards provided the suit directly from the President” and that MEARS then verified certain design elements of the garment against photos and video, including pocket placement, buttons, and the collar of the suit jacket, which Mr. Trump had sewn down in the back to keep it in place. (Though given the number of blue suits Mr. Trump appears to own, it is hard to know how anyone could tell them apart.)Selling the mug shot suit tracks, to a certain extent, with other examples of fan culture. Paige Rubin, an assistant vice president and the head of sale for handbags at Christie’s, said there was an almost insatiable public appetite for souvenirs of the famous and infamous, and often the most valuable pieces of memorabilia at auction are determined by provenance: “Does the object you are selling resonate with the fan base? Does it connect to an iconic moment in a career?”Similarly, there is a long tradition of auctioning memorabilia from public figures, including many presidents, as Summer Anne Lee, a historian of presidential dress at the Fashion Institute of Technology, noted. Scraps of Abraham Lincoln’s bloodstained bedsheets regularly come up for auction, and a pair of Richard Nixon’s eyeglasses from around the time of his resignation were sold in 2005 for $1,955. In 2019, a pair of underpants believed to have belonged to Eva Braun, Hitler’s wife, were gaveled at almost $5,000.However, despite the fact that Melania Trump likewise sold one of her most notable White House outfits — the white hat she wore during the French state visit in 2018 — as part of her own NFT drop, and despite Mr. Trump’s own history of monetizing his own brand in a way other political candidates might not dare, it is almost unheard-of for a living president to hawk his own memorabilia for his own profits, Ms. Lee said. Though NFT INT is not related to the Trump organization and Mr. Trump is not a part of the company, as a licenser Mr. Trump would probably receive a percentage of sales.Which makes it in his interest to divide the suit into as many pieces as possible — both financially and, even more pointedly, conceptually.After all, if a garment is considered “historic,” keeping it whole would seem the more desirable choice. That would allow it to be exhibited in a museum, or a presidential library (or, in the case of Marilyn Monroe’s “Happy Birthday, Mr. President” dress, Ripley’s Believe It or Not! museum).On the other hand, most tiny scraps of clothing that exist in collections are religious curios, fragments of martyrs’ gowns. Treating the mug shot suit in the same way “suggests Trump believes the suit he wore for his mug shot will be even more motivational to his fans than any other,” Ms. Lee said. “They are offering it like pieces of religious clothing, which implies Mr. Trump is a saint who has been through trials and tribulations for the country.”Indeed, said Sean Wilentz, a professor of American history at Princeton University, the sale suggests a “quasi-religious element, as if the suit Trump wore in court has special charismatic qualities.”Well, one of the cards in the set does depict Mr. Trump as a golden god. More

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      John Fetterman Got a New Suit for His Senate Swearing-In

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      The Pennsylvania lawmaker joins the Washington establishment. Sort of.John Fetterman has a new suit. On Jan. 3, the junior senator from Pennsylvania, whose penchant for Carhartt sweatshirts, Dickies and baggy shorts was as much a part of his political brand as any stump speech, was sworn in as part of the 118th Congress wearing a relatively tailored, previously unseen light gray two-button number. This is a big deal, in part because during his time as lieutenant governor, Mr. Fetterman had made a point of stating that he had only one dark suit. On a day notable for the chaos around the election of Speaker of the House, that suit, as well as the light blue striped tie and polished black lace-ups Mr. Fetterman also wore, may have been the biggest political fashion statement of the incoming class. It was more symbolic even than Nancy Pelosi’s bright pink passing-of-the-baton outfit, or the smattering of suffragist white worn by some women in the House, or even J.D. Vance’s Trumpian uniform of navy suit, white shirt and glowing red tie. And it confirms Mr. Fetterman as one of the more unexpected image makers in Washington. It’s not that he dresses particularly well, though the new suit was a step up. It’s that he dresses with purpose.Indeed, Mr. Fetterman’s new suit was as notable as any of the fashion statements made by various members of Congress since clothes began to play a bigger role in electoral communications. To wit: January 2019, when a large group of women of the newly elected 116th Congress wore white to their swearing-in in honor of their suffragist predecessors (and as a counterstrike to the image-making focus of the Trump administration).Or, for that matter, almost every State of the Union and major public event since then — most recently in December, when a number of lawmakers wore yellow and blue to Volodymyr Zelensky’s congressional speech. If there’s a photo op involved, there’s generally a fashion decision aforethought.The silent communication that comes via clothing has become a standard part of the political toolbox. It’s wielded with increasing dexterity by, for example, elected officials like Kyrsten Sinema, who used her kooky wardrobe of sleeveless tops, colored wigs and the occasional denim vest to telegraph her independence from political norms long before she officially became an independent. Also Jim Jordan, who symbolized his willingness to fight during committee hearings by abandoning his jackets and rolling up his shirt sleeves. The Washington wardrobe is so standardized that any deviation from the norm stands out, especially on TV.Unless, of course, your default position is deviation from the norm — in which case a return to business as usual becomes the surprise. As Mr. Fetterman well knows.Before heading off to the Capitol for his swearing-in, he tweeted, “For those of you asking, yes, there will be a Fetterman in shorts today, but it’s not me.” (It was one of his sons, gamely continuing the family campaign to free the knee.) Rather than deny the idea that he thinks about what he wears, or having his staff deny it for him, Mr. Fetterman long ago turned his wardrobe into an asset: the subject of self-deprecating funny asides, social media jokes and pretty potent public appeal.He has blogged that he can’t roll up his sleeves because he only wears short sleeves. He has tweeted that his outfits are “Western PA business casual” and celebrated his new “Formal Hoodie.” (His wife, Gisele, has made fun of him for it; political couples — they’re just like us.) He was never exactly a working man — he was a mayor with a master’s degree from Harvard — but he dressed like one, and it helped humanize him, get him recognized and make a name for himself that resonated beyond the borders of Pennsylvania and into the realm of late-night TV even before he won his election. Arguably it helped win the election.And it meant that when he showed up on Capitol Hill in November for his orientation in a dark suit and blue tie, he got the sort of excited attention not normally bestowed on a senator-elect making a drive-by visit to his new workplace. Rather he resembled some sort of semi-celebrity, even as his willingness to play by Senate dress code rules and fit into the institution can’t have escaped his new colleagues.Nor, probably, could the sleight of hand that managed to make wearing a conservative suit look like a radical move. And they can expect more where this came from: According to his office, the new suit is one of three Mr. Fetterman has purchased, along with six — count ’em — ties. More