The $8.75 Dress That Sparked Political Fire

One way our nation’s most “prestigious” newspapers show they’re partisan propaganda is when their fashion critics apply all of their tawdry biases to evaluations of politicians’ attire or their spouses.

Prominent fashion critics Robin Givhan and Vanessa Friedman have been transparently partisan in their interpretations. A white pantsuit worn by Hillary Clinton, as well as feminist Democrats at the State of the Union, was considered chic. However, when Tulsi Gabbard wore a similar outfit during her 2019 Democratic debate critique of Hillary Clinton, it suddenly carried “connotations of the fringe” and displayed “somewhat combative righteousness (also cult leaders).”

Following Kamala Harris’s loss in 2024, Friedman invested significant meaning in the cravat she wore to her concession speech. She described it as representing “the idea that some fights were long. That this one had been going on for decades (even centuries) and would continue afterward.” It was, in that way, a symbol of both promise and lament.

Feminism lost. Women were shortchanged again.

They’re a sorry breed — or just breeders.

Pregnancy chic is now being criticized as gross by Friedman.

Her latest target is Usha Vance, the wife of the vice president who has labored harder than Melania Trump to stay out of the limelight. The headline was “The Politics and Power of the Pregnancy Image.”

Friedman argued that MAGA women have created a notably consistent, and somewhat paradigm-shifting, picture of the White House’s family and fertility platform.

“If the bare-chested, muscled mixed martial arts fighters of the U.F.C. match that President Trump hosted on Flag Day were the poster guys for MAGA’s image of masculinity, then the pregnant women of Trump world are one half of their feminine counterparts,” Friedman stated.

Friedman expressed alarm over “pro-natalist” sentiments: “Along with the sheath-clad, lip-filled, pageant-haired Mar-a-Lago set, they offer an image of idealized womanhood that gives literal shape to the pronatalist movement.”

Her supposed fashion experts were pro-abortion feminists — Helen Lewis and Jill Filipovic. Lewis noted, “It’s really noticeable that the MAGA women are not hiding their pregnancy. There is pride in being pregnant and being fertile.”

Aren’t most Americans happy and proud during pregnancy?

Why on Earth should pregnant women hide?

Friedman quickly turned her criticism to Mrs. Vance: “She is wearing a stretchy coral dress that hugs her stomach, making what she is talking about very clear.”

Usha Vance mocked the critique on X: “Now that we know the political significance of my $8.75 coral maternity dress from Old Navy, I can’t wait to hear what critics have to say about my elastic-waistband pants and compression socks!”

She used a screenshot demonstrating she paid $8.75.

The dress quickly sold out at Old Navy.

Friedman simply hates women who marry conservative men. It’s much like Jen Psaki, joking in a 2025 podcast about Mrs. Vance: “I always wonder what’s going on in the mind of his wife. Like, are you OK? Please blink four times. Come over here. We’ll save you.”

Marry a conservative man, and you’re clearly a self-loathing doormat, quietly dying inside.

Six days before the attack on Usha Vance, Friedman was touting the fashion sense of Rama Duwaji, the spouse of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani for an ugly New York Knicks getup after the NBA Finals. The headline said she “Won the Parade.” She was presented as unifying: “Basketball and realized dreams don’t just unite the city, but also designers and the political figures who wear them.”

The political bias is forever obvious.