Rockin' The Full Trump

I wore the PRESIDENT’S clothing line to his new D.C. bar. That’s when things got interesting. 

- Eric Sullivan

The blazer—navy blue, two-button, notched lapel, 12 percent silk to lend a sheen—was a facsimile of style. The tie—satin weave in flamboyant yellow and blue—snagged on anything with a sharp edge. Silk strands sloughed off behind me as if I were a sartorial Johnny Appleseed. Its label read, like someone’s idea of a sick international-labor joke, hecho en china.

It was a Saturday night in Washington, D. C. , one day after the president signed an executive order barring refugees worldwide—and anyone from seven predominantly Muslim countries—from entering the country. Sporting the jacket-and-tie combo, both from the Trump Collection—a licensed line of business wear—I headed to Trump International Hotel. Standing at the bar in its cavernous atrium, the Benjamin (as in Franklin—I could hear bones rolling all the way from Philadelphia), I struck up conversations with Trump supporters.

Ever since Donald Trump hang-tenned on a hate wave to the highest office in the land, we’ve entered an intensified phase of politicized consumerism. Every decision you make, from the apps you tap to the restaurants you dine at, is an inherently political act.

Starting in October, an initiative built around the #GrabYourWallet movement (a reference to Trump’s enthusiasm for grabbing something altogether more private) encouraged the boycott of stores carrying Trump related goods. In February, Nordstrom announced that due to low sales, it would no longer carry Ivanka Trump’s line of clothing; in response, the president tweeted that his daughter had been “treated so unfairly” by the company. With Trump, even the sales rack is partisan.