Melania Trump’s new portrait breaks with the past

• After the inaugural hat, the official portrait. Once again, Melania Trump is telegraphing to the world that we should not expect first lady business as usual. But perhaps we should expect business? The picture, which will top Trump’s official webpage and make its way to the National Archives, was taken by Régine Mahaux, a Belgian photographer and Trump insider who also took Trump’s first official portrait in 2017 and whose photographs of the president and Trump have appeared on the covers of Us Weekly, French Vanity Fair, Paris Match and Russian Tatler.

It resembles nothing so much as a promo image for the next season of a show that, if it existed, might be called “The Boardroom.” The portrait, featuring Trump in a slick Dolce & Gabbana tuxedo complete with cummerbund and white shirt, two buttons undone, shows her silhouetted against a large window, the Washington Monument jutting up behind her right shoulder. Her hands are tented atop a broad desk polished to a mirrored shine. She is gazing directly into the camera, mouth set in a straight line with just a hint of amusement at the edges. Her hips are tilted slightly to one side, hair in carefully controlled waves. She looks ready to school the country.

If there was a tagline to accompany the photo, it might read, “It’s my turn now.” The energy is less first lady than boss lady. Arguably, the first lady is always effectively a boss lady. But that aspect of the job has traditionally remained hidden from public view, with everyone involved conspiring to perpetuate the illusion of the presidential spouse as representative of all things domestic and familial. Apparently not any more.

Trump’s portrait differs notably from first lady portraits that came before and not just because it was taken in stark black and white. As a rule, a first lady’s official portrait shows her smiling in a welcoming, albeit polished way and is usually snapped in a setting that emphasizes the femininity of the official helpmeet. Which is to say, it almost always involves flowers. And pearls.

There were flowers and pearls, for example, in Michelle Obama’s photographs in 2009 and 2013. Flowers and pearls in the shot of Jill Biden in 2021 and Laura Bush in 2001. They were all gamely playing the decorous part. Even Trump seemed to be making an effort to get in character for her 2017 picture, which showed her posed in front of the famous West Hall sitting room window of the residence, where Nancy Reagan also posed for her official photograph. (Like Reagan, Trump had a bow at her neck in the 2017 portrait, though hers was black rather than red and, again, part of a Dolce & Gabbana suit.) Trump’s arms may have been crossed protectively over her chest, the better to show off her enormous diamond ring, but the shot was in color, she was smiling, and the whole thing was bathed in a companionable, soft-focus glow.

This time the image owes little to the way things used to be done. The portrait was taken in the Yellow Oval Room of the residence, but you’d never know it. The environment has nothing hostessy about it. The reference seems more Claire Underwood as president in the last season of “House of Cards” as opposed to any real historical continuum.

Which is on-brand for the Trump administration in pretty much every way. The president has long been taking his cues from television. He has staffed the executive branch with TV news personalities. And he has gleefully upended the conventions of Washington. Why should the first lady be any different?