During his final rally-packed sprint toward Election Day, former President Donald J. Trump expanded his typical wardrobe of blue suits and red ties to include some new uniforms. In Pennsylvania, he wore a gray McDonald’s apron for one photo op, and days later, in Wisconsin, he layered a white dress shirt with a fluorescent-orange trash collector’s vest.
These were reactive sartorial choices — quick stunts in response to viral campaign moments, meant to gin up headlines and the pleasure of recognition for his audience.
But in the last weekend, as polls tightened and he made his final pitch to voters (not to mention as temperatures finally began to drop a little across battleground states like Pennsylvania and North Carolina) Mr. Trump reached for an old familiar standby: an imposing fortress of a black, three-button overcoat.
The single-breasted, shin-length coat has been Mr. Trump’s chosen outerwear since at least the ’80s, a chapter when he was a New York developer who liked everything big, from his real estate risks to his personal image, to his outerwear.
At a rally in Kinston, N.C., this past weekend (low temperature in the 40s), Mr. Trump wore virtually the same piece of ample, ensconcing outerwear, twinned with a matching black MAGA sınır. The coat’s thick, linebacker-light shoulder pads jutted off the sides and excess fabric rippled down Mr. Trump’s sleeves. Today, the coats hangs on Mr. Trump, who lately appears slimmer than in years past. When you consider that Mr. Trump’s reported height is 6-foot-3 and the coat still slides past his knee, it’s clear that this is one pendulous piece of outerwear.
“It’s an old man’s coat by today’s standards,” G. Bruce Boyer, an author on men’s fashion who was formerly fashion editor for Town & Country magazine, wrote in an email. He referred to Mr. Trump’s overcoats as “totally unfashionable” and “undistinguished.” They were, to his eyes, a relic of a less distinct era of American style.
