Month: February 2017

On The Biggest Date Night Of The Year, Fashion Did Not Step Out

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Yes, it is the fourteenth day of February, but who asked fashion to be their Valentine?  By the looks of it, no one

on-valentines-dayBy Mao Shan Wang

On Valentine’s Day, fashion, like so many singles, stayed at home—ignored and, possibly, forgotten. Special occasion wear—if it still exists—has been relegated to some corner of the wardrobe, untouched and unloved. You’d think that on the day that celebrates love, fashion might be courted with as much fervour as this day is celebrated with so much ardour. That thinking is, of course, as intact as a pair of shredded denim cut-offs.

I would have been ensconced at home too if not for the urge to see what the trend among courting couples this year was. The girls, I had thought, would surely have something in mind to make them look good for their guy—more than good, possibly. Or did I have an outmoded idea of what it means to celebrate, or dress for, Valentine’s Day?

I decided to take my observation to 313@Orchard and Orchard Central, that continuous expanse of mall and the mass market that has a strange pull for the young and those on dates. The journey there, in fact, was a prelude to what I was going to see. Sales of roses, as a single stalk or as a bouquet, seemed to enjoy better business than clothes, if the number of peddlers (persistent as tissue sellers) on every street and corner is any indication.

On the MRT train, the casualness of every commuter’s attire was no different from that of Saturday afternoon rides. Seated in front of me, intertwined like a macramé knot, was a couple barely outside the border of teenage years. The girl sat in a manner that made it easy for her boyfriend to go all limbs over her, which meant that her body was aslant—hips jutting out into her neighbour’s space. This bodily intrusion was made more apparent by what the girl wore from the waist down: thigh-hugging micro-shorts that had a roughly two-inch zip on the side seam. Unsurprisingly, it was unzipped. Also unsurprisingly, her underwear was out to catch some air. Why, I wondered, isn’t seduction by Y-fronts a male practice?

What struck me most was the number of couples in shorts. Has this become a dating norm or is this just unique to our island? Sure, we’re known for our extremely casual sense of dress. And there’s always the punishing weather to blame, but isn’t there even a day in a calendar year that encourages one going out with a romantic partner to put in a modicum of effort?

As I stepped onto the escalator to reach the ground level of 313, I soon came eye-to-butt with a couple in shorts that fit only one description: ratty. The guy was in a pair of very crushed ‘berms’ that looked like it had spent most of its life in an urn used to salt vegetables. His girl was in a pair that could have been his sleepwear, cut so brief he would not have remembered it as his long pyjama bottom. Now, this is not a couple going downstairs from their flat to run an errand. I am sure of that because the girl was holding dearly a stalk of rose held rigid in a clear tubular plastic case, like a dozen or more girls did throughout the two malls.

This severely low in diversity quickly discouraged me from spending more time establishing the existence of fashionable couples. I thought I should go for dinner before it became impossible to find a table. At the upper, upper floors of Orchard Central, queues outside eateries were already too long to manage without affecting your patience, appetite or sanity, or all three. That’s the thing about dining on Valentine’s Day: if you’re not a couple, don’t! Even if you’re a couple, don’t!!! In any case, I was hungry; I was not going to give up without trying. I did not dress un-casually for nothing.

Luck came to me in the form of an empty (but not cleared) table, set on the corridor, no doubt to increase the seating capacity of the restaurant in times of a romance boom. A good table, I thought, since I could afford a view of the coming and going along the passageway. As soon as I placed my order, I was seized with pain-inducing regret. A queue started to form, snaking past my table as rapidly as Snake. It was not an unmoving line, and this was what bred annoyance: the queueing diners saw no reason to distance themselves from my table, and there I was in a posterior-privy position. Again.

One by one they passed by my face, a slideshow of shorts and thighs, of scantiness and unsightliness. A Valentine’s Day dinner date now really resembles supper at the most popular 24-hour nasi lemak stall. Just get in line. Nobody cares if you wear your sleep clothes; nobody notices, not, even sadly, your significant other. As people keep saying, love is blind. Totally.

Photo: Zhao Xiangji

Two Of A Kind: Saying It (Again) On The Chest

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tees-ode-to-feminismLeft, Dior’s urging-on-a-tee for spring/summer 2017 and right, Prabal Gurung’s annoyingly similar version

Fashion loves getting political. We get it. It’s a chance to show that designers and customers are smart, in the swim of things, championing social causes. But how many times can you repeat the same message before it gets stale?

For the finale of Prabal Gurung’s recent New York Fashion Week show, the designer sent models down the runway in T-shirts with messages that seem to be a dig at the current political climate in the US. The use of clothes as a medium to rally support for a designer’s convictions is nothing new. The Brits are especially good at it, with Vivienne Westwood, and before her, Katherine Hamnett, leading the pack.

But with Mr Gurung doing what Dior’s Maria Grazia Chiuri already did for the current spring/summer collection (out in stores), you really do wonder if the American designers are struggling with originality. Why can’t he do something else? Or is this just Mr Gurung’s not-very-clever rejoinder—another-keep-the-conversation-going spiel? Are we not bored yet?

prabal-gurungPrabal Gurung during his customary catwalk bow

It does not help that there is no attempt at re-designing the way the message is delivered. The text is printed in an all-caps and a sans-serif font, with a centralised layout, as it was with Dior’s (not that the latter’s is exceptional, to begin with). The T-shirt does not look like a designed item, more like something picked from a wholesaler and sent to the digital printer down the road. It is not making the imagination work over time to think that Mr Gurung added this segment as an afterthought, rather than including it as part of the collection from the start.

Prabal Gurung himself appeared on the runway at the end of the show in one of them tees. It was a size picked to show off his body, which also begs the question: who wears fitted T-shirts anymore other than die-hard, or-all-the-effort-goes-unnoticed gym bunnies?

Feminism deserves better than a message on a tee.

Photos: indigital.tv

Raf’s Calvin Looks Like This

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This is not the first time Raf Simons designs for other houses. His debut at Jil Sander in 2005 and then at Christian Dior in 2012 had one thing in common: a breathtaking first showing. We’ve waited with bated breath (again) for this collection since the first discreet announcement last year that Mr Simons would be holding the creative reins at Calvin Klein. Is his first with an American house any good?

Fashion in America is in a strange place. Across categories and price points, American labels seem to be struggling with sales and identity, as much as a consumer base that seems less interested in what dressing the American way means—a la Gap and co. Yes, denim is still popular, so are T-shirts, but less so for chinos (for now, brands such as Save Khaki United is in a tricky position). Or the sportswear that American designers so gladly and proudly base their brand DNA on. When was the last time you rushed out to buy an American label?

Over there (and over here), it’s not just a changing fashion culture, but a shifting visual culture too. America today is a picture of extreme casualness. Its people—born in the land or elsewhere—do not want to look as formal as they once did, when both men and women wore suits to work and for social occasions. There’s also less a need to show the world that you’re moving upward by wearing what is perceived to be expensive clothes, such as a suit. Or even a suit jacket.

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The Calvin Klein that Raf Simons seeks to remake does not seem to reflect these not-necessarily-just-in-America cultural changes. With so many suits on show—and the more difficult-to-wear double-breasted—one wonders if Mr Simons has dreamed up a more romantic, bygone vision of America, or a European’s image of the land of the free. In his show notes, Mr Simons says “It’s the future, the past, Art Deco, the city, the American West… all of these things and none of these things. Not one era, not one thing, not one look. It is the coming together of different characters and different individuals, just like America itself. It is the unique beauty and emotion of America.” Could that be what Cole Porter once wrote, “Anything Goes”?

This debut isn’t quite like his past debuts; it did not inspire gushing admiration. Could there have been too many first presentations? Or have we become a tad too familiar, hence bored, with the by-now-ever-present Raf Simons codes that were once unanticipated at Jill Sander and refreshing at Dior? Did we expect too much?

To be fair, Calvin Klein isn’t a house with a full set of recognizable design ideas that can be mined. Tracing his inspiration to “the city, the American West” is possibly Mr Simons’s way of not depending on what is non-existent. Indeed, how many designer label consumers today can say for certain what the Calvin Klein look is if you took away the denim jeans as well as underwear ads?

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What’s surprising (striking to you?) at Raf Simons’s Calvin Klein is the conventional silhouettes. There isn’t, for example, the oversized proportion of the current collection for his eponymous label. Or, if you go further back, the ethereal yet structured dreaminess that set the mood for his re-awakening of Dior. At that time, his simple yet detailed forms made everyone else’s overwrought output looked somewhat dated.

At New York Fashion Week’s autumn/winter 2017 season, Mr Simons does not tease and simultaneously tempt the way he did in Paris five years ago. Perhaps, geographical difference and the geopolitical contrast between then and now demand a certain aesthetic that negates quirk and edge. There is also the possibility that one needs to keep to Calvin Klein’s entrenched “minimalism”—a post-Euro-minimalism branding of the ’90s that the label is still fixated with.

Don’t get us wrong. This is not a lacklustre collection. It’s got an energy that is not always present in the New York shows. And it is a lot more daring than the offerings of conventional New York labels. But it does not make one hunger and crave even when there are some pieces one does not mind owning.

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We like the woman’s blazer with what looks like engageante sleeves (which also appeared in the Raf Simons collection last month). That’s something rather incongruent with the Calvin Klein aesthetic—a detail more in sync with Mr Simons’s own inclination to deconstruct, and a colour paring (yellow and gray) that recall his bold use of brights.

That’s not the only sleeve that we find interesting. There’s the pullover with thick sleeves (that is reminiscent of varsity sweaters) attached to a sheer, skin-toned bodice. Versions for both men and women appear a few times on the catwalk. Although it’s unclear who might seriously be keen on such sheerness if they are not pop stars with the proclivity for such display, it is consistent with Mr Simons’s tendency to contrast textures and densities.

What’s also more the Belgian than the American founder of the label is the graphic elements: not only in terms of trims, but also in the details. A top with a cutaway at the left shoulder that is allowed to fold down across the upper chest to show its underside is appealing, but it brings to mind somewhat similar treatment seen in the Mr Simons’s Dior resort 2015 collection.

Surprising? Mr Simons has always reprised the woman’s suit silhouette that he dreamed up and perfected at Jil Sander (in particular, the proportion of the jacket to the pants), but he’s been able to tweak it at Dior so that the latter versions were truly sleek, youthful-looking, and, dare we say, sexy. Some quintessentially Raf Simons ideas are, therefore, expected at Calvin Klein—fans would be disappointed otherwise. But could these have been a little too obvious even amid the flourishes that are supposed to be American by genesis?

Whether Raf Simons is running out of steam is not yet a persuasive premise for the lack of wow at Calvin Klein, itself, like so many other brands of its peer, languishing too long in the powerlessness of moving forward. Perhaps Mr Simons is pandering to the long-held belief that American fashion, unlike European, isn’t quite the crucible of innovative, rule-breaking ideas. It is possible he is keeping to the standard that has made fashion in the US mostly looking across the oceans, but rarely leading.

The re-imagining of Calvin Klein by Raf Simon has shifted the focus to New York. Of course all eyes are now already on America—although for the wrong reasons. Calvin Klein was once considered a great American designer name. Whether Mr Simons can make Calvin Klein great again remains to be seen.

Photo: Imaxtree

Diversity? Let’s Not Be Quick To Claim

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American Vogue’s latest cover has encouraged the media to cheer the magazine’s attempt at presenting a face of “diversity”. Sure, quite a few have challenged that description too, but the diversity tag is as adhesive as gum on cement floor. Seven women, although racially different, in one issue is, however, hardly diverse in the mag’s 125 years of existence. It may be different if seven women from the seven countries banned by Donald Trump from entering the US appear instead.

The March issue of Anna Wintour’s pet publication says it “celebrates modern American women” in an Instagram post, avoiding the use of the word “diversity”. It is possible that that is deliberate because the editorial team knows putting seven almost similarly girthed and limbed girls on one page just once is hardly diverse. Even the skin tones are alike (although this could be due to the light of what appears to be a setting sun), prompting the suspicion that Vogue is not inclined to deviate from their norm by going extremely dark-skinned.

On that cover, we see Liu Wen, a lass CNN calls “the first Asian woman to grace American Vogue’s cover.” This is where things become a little disconcerting. Liu Wen has to share the cover, near the left edge of the page; she did not have the cover to herself. Until the day Vogue is able to assign the entire cover to an Asian face, just as they did for black women in the August 1974 issue that featured Beverly Johnson, we can’t really say an Asian has singly made it to Vogue’s coveted cover.

China’s Liu Wen has doubtlessly been successful in the US. Her 2010 contract with Estee Lauder as the beauty brand’s “global face” has made her widely recognisable, particularly in the States, where she too scored with heterosexual males when, in 2009, she was the first Chinese to sashay on a Victoria Secret catwalk. In 2015, Forbes placed her 12th on the list of the world’s highest-paid models of that year with an income of USD4.5 million (by contrast, the No.1 Gisele Bundchen made “USD44 million before taxes and expenses”). Her success reflects her appeal on the international scene, in which a rather white client base has a rather different take on what is an Asian beauty.

In China, Liu Wen is conversely not considered by the Chinese to be that beautiful, certainly not in line with classic Chinese beauties such as Yang Guifei, or her modern sisters Gong Li and Fan Bingbing. To be fair, Liu Wen is Vogue China’s favourite model and has appeared on their cover and in countless editorials. Her look, not ethnically unique but caters to the Western sense of what is Oriental, is considered plain to the regular folks of her homeland. As one Shanghai-based marketing manager once said to SOTD, “刘雯是美，但时装界的美不代表男人找媳妇的美” (Liu Wen is beautiful, but the fashion world’s beauty is not the same as the beauty that a man looking for a wife seeks).

“Women rule” (even only in modelling) may be a sexy catchphrase in “a climate of immigration bans and building walls”, but let’s see more diversity beyond this one March issue before Vogue So White gets an unwelcome hashtag.

Photo: voguemagazine on Instagram

DSMS Opening: It’s Now July

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dsms-opening

Contrary to our earlier report, as well as Dover Street Market (Singapore)’s own announcement last December and sources at the Haysmarket store in London, DSMS will not open in spring, or after Chinese New Year (first thought to be after chap goh mei). The latest reveal on the DSMS website states a July opening.

This new date does make sense from a selling-season standpoint. If DSMS were to open in February, it would have to be stocked with merchandise of the current collections, which to retailers is mid-season, considering that spring/summer products these days appear as early as late November. Launching the spring/summer collections in February (or March) would mean a narrow selling period in which the goods can be sold at full price before the annual clearance sale.

Still, to us, it is worth the wait. Few are the cities that get their own DSM.

Clash and Crash

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One of the most discordant collections of the couture season is also strangely cohesive and one of the most entrancing

 

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For couture, Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren are not exactly press darlings the way Karl Lagerfeld is at Chanel—always feted. The duo tends to march to their own off-beat hemiolas, creating clothes that sometimes go against the emancipation of women’s wear today, spurring a discourse on fashion and feminism. Yet, they have so much up their bespoke sleeves that, more often than not, their collections encourage hours of musing.

Good artists tend to similarly provoke. Viktor and Rolf do not just produce a couture collection that inspires admiration, but awe as well. They have a flair for compositional contrasts that get the mulling over into overdrive. What’s this? Where did it come from? Where does it take the wearer from here?

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The spring collection showed the disparate approach seen in such a pronounced way that the duo took last fall. With found vintage cocktail wear, they’ve deconstructed the old to reconstruct anew—with a push-pull dynamic that recalls the original Maison Margiela Artisanal collection, but with all the irreverence so characteristic of Viktor and Rolf, and with more of their kooky romanticism. Scarlet O’Hara would have appreciated this.

One rarely gets to see tiered ruffles treated this way: so sweet, with ombré effect, and strangely alluring even when ruffles may border on the over-the-top. These ruffles are applied so that the standard silhouettes are broken, but only gently. The only other label that we can think of that dared to lop and slash and send layers of ruffles askew is Comme des Garçons. But Victor and Rolf’s treatment is not so dark, and is more in keeping with 19th-century prettiness than 21st-century obsession with shattering conventional attractiveness.

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Dubbed Boulevard of Broken Dreams (which we took to mean fragmented rather than smashed), the collection came together with amazing unity. We like the unexpected placement of those repurposed pieces from found clothes. Since there probably isn’t more than one of those clothes, whoever orders a dress isn’t going to get one looking exactly like what was shown on the catwalk. In fact, we think customers are going to get quite a different garment, which would play up the uniqueness of the designs. This seems to be taking customisation to an uncommon level.

Viktor and Rolf’s couture collections are not always approachable. Neither are the gowns a red carpet habitué. But the partners have always maintained their atelier as “a laboratory of ideas”, the way a couture house was once touted to be. If high fashion needs to be propelled into the next century, it needs creativity and derring-do to keep the engines well oiled. Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren seem committed to see to that.

Photos: Alessandro Garofalo/Indigital.tv

 

 

He Did It. Alone.

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Now a solo act, Pierpaolo Piccioli’s Valentino SS 2017 couture proves that sometimes fashion is really better as an OMS

 

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The couture season is well over. We’re now looking at the collections again. Like good books, some fashion collections deserve a revisit. And one that really brought pleasure to us again is Valentino. These are, simply put, sensational clothes. They are fine-looking, closer to Valentino in spirit, and clearly directional.

Pierpaolo Piccioli has shown that he can steer the storied house alone, sans a partner that has proved to be quite unspectacular—dull, even—at Dior, reaffirming, once again, that couture is, perhaps, better in the hands of a man.

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Yes, we risk being chastised for posting a sexist statement (we’re not, rest assured, keeping apace in the era of Trump!). To be sure, we’re not saying women can’t do couture. No one will dispute the talent of Coco Chanel. Or Madame Gres. Or Madeline Vionnet. Or, for those who insist on contemporary references, Iris Van Herpen. But not that many women can weave magic in the couture.

And it would be narrow not to accept that the sexes do design differently. We are not sure how the balance of creative power played out before, but with a female in the equation, Valentino did look a tad fussily femme. At times, it was even theatrical, as if homage to literary damsels of the past. That’s not, of course, necessarily a bad thing (we’re still enamoured with those painterly embroidery). It’s just that too much of the frills and flowers just got a little tired and predictable.

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Mr Piccioli’s couture collection is so spare, yet stunning, so desirous of caress. You just want to jump into one of those column dresses. With clothes this eye-catchingly simple, why, one wonders, would there be the upsurge in the overwrought, over-embroidered, over-designed. Mr Piccioli showed that ruffles need not mean flamenco and that gossamer need not be vulgar. Even when there were embellishments, there were, to us, judicious use and application, which recall the gowns Audrey Hepburn had worn (she was not strictly Givenchy), such as the beaded dress that she presented herself in at The Proust Ball at the Château de Ferrières in 1971. A light touch.

To us, there is in the collection a nod to Valentino of the Firenze years, when Jackie Kennedy first came to be acquainted with the designer’s clothes in 1964, and soon became a long-time client. When Diana Vreeland first met Valentino, also in that year, she was reported to have said to him, “Even at birth, genius always stands out. I see genius in you. Good luck.” It’s too early to discern genius in Pierpaolo Piccioli’s Valentino, but we sure like to say good luck too.

Photos: Imaxtree

Is Ivanka Trump Hurting Ivanka Trump?

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Or is it the bland and uninspiring designs that were doomed from the very start?

 

ivanka-trumpIvanka Trump: loyal daughter, political aspirant, fashion entrepreneur. Photo: ivankatrump.com

By Mao Shan Wang

American fashion isn’t in good shape; it looks as if the hems are fraying. Closures left, right and centre, including storied names such as Donna Karan, and rescue missions by non-Americans such as Raf Simons at Calvin Klein point to troubled times. Even New York’s fashion darling Marc Jacobs is nearing undone at the seams, it seems. LVMH CEO Bernard Arnault appeared to have accepted a rather declinisme outcome when he said, “I’m more concerned about Marc Jacobs than the U.S. President”, as Tweeted by Quartz reporter Marc Bain two weeks ago.

I, like many fellow contributors here at SOTD, do consider American fashion an oxymoron. Still, I watch the developments over there with keen interest, such as those at Ivanka Trump’s eponymous fashion label. A headline in the vein of “Nordstrom Is Dropping Ivanka Trump’s Brand” does arouse my interest. Lest it’s mistaken, I am no fan of the Donald’s determined daughter, but I am curious about her attempts at building a fashion empire, a la Tory Burch, which, like the later, are not based on changing the game, or hemlines. But at least Ms Burch has what can be considered a track record, and a look—even when boho (preppy or not) is now by and large a no-no.

invanka-trump-homepageIvanka Trump’s Goop-ish website, without the advertising 

Ms Trump, on the other hand, has mostly a hackneyed idea of what a working woman needs and that distaste-inspiring family name, which was used to launch the fashion line (initially just fine jewellery “for women buying for themselves”) that she founded in 2007. According to Racked, which four days ago also first reported that Nordstrom had dropped her line, her flagship store in Mercer Street of New York’s Soho “has quietly shuttered” in October last year. Could the closure of her main retail outlet be due to poor performance or part of her attempt at distancing herself from the business as she makes inroads into the political muddle of present-day Washington?

That woman has ambition, for sure (a Trump trait?), but style, that I am not quite certain. She looks attractive (“a piece of ass”, as her father concurred with shock jock Howard Stern in 2006), but that does not mean she is stylish. Much of what you want to know about her fashion aesthetic can be gleaned from her website ivankatrump.com, which seems to be modelled on those sites that are conceived to “help” women better their lives, such as Goop. What is it about marriage or motherhood that makes some women want to reach out to others (the “self-purchasing female”?) and teach them how to conduct their lives, or choose a dress? What is it about mothers at work that make them inclined to want to connect with other mothers at work to goad them into being better working mothers? What is it about having a baby that makes some women more entrepreneurial—a Tjin Lee-style expression of do good for each other and make some money in the mean time?

ivanka-trump-twitter-creenshotScreen grab of Ivanka Trump’s Twitter post that amounted to a sales pitch

Ivanka Trump’s doom in fashion was made when she rode on her family name to birth her label ten years ago, rather than bank on real talent in fashion design or retail. In fact, Mrs Jared Kushner has never made an attempt at playing down her maiden name in what she does; even her 2009 self-help book was called The Trump Card! It is tempting to surmise that Ms Trump has no friends because if she does, at least one of them would have alerted her to the salient fact that name (and fame) did not let Lindsay Lohan hand any glory to Ungaro (you remember that embarrassing stint?).

The problem is also compounded by Ms Trump’s constant appearance at her father’s side, particularly in the election year. Does she even have time to design (or oversee the design)? Her fate was sealed near the end of the campaign season last year when she Tweeted the day after the Republican National Convention—where she wore one of her retail dresses—the shameless encouragement “Shop Ivanka’s look from the #RNC speech.” The lack of subtlety, as many saw it, accelerated the tumble.

Clearly, not everyone likes daddy’s girl. Or she who uses daddy’s stage to sell her own wares!

While so many now see a First Daughter (really a political novice), I see a Barbie-esque woman who shares the same adjective as her father’s favourite charge: “fake news”. If you look at what she peddles, you see an individual disconnected with the ever-changing world of fashion, but wedged in a tired idea of what constitutes office wear. Does such a category even exist anymore? Just because you go to the work place regularly does not mean you have to look office-bound. As such, she fashions Ivanka Trump the label after herself. In her own office in the Trump Tower, she is the one who lays down the rules of dress. The thing is, how do you define Ms Trump’s look? You can’t. That goes for her label.

Ivanka Trump merchandise.jpgIvanka Trump fashion is still hawked on some online stores such as Zappos and Macy’s. Photos: from respective online stores

In fact, dismal are the designs, as exceptional as her father’s shirts and ties at Macy’s—with the same appeal as what are plonked on his body… daily! Should the Ivanka Trump collection be yanked off the production line, it won’t be missed. When your looks appear to be based on the playbook of Forever 21 and the like, priced to appeal to those willing to pay more, people will forget it when tomorrow comes and the ho-hum does not hold up. I am especially shocked by the footwear: could they have been discards from Aldo?

Ivanka Trump is supposed to have put space between herself and her ventures. Amid questions swirling around like a chiffon skirt about what it means ethically for the Trump family to still run their businesses, she was reported to have said that she would not be involved in her own or her father’s. Yet, oddly, she has kept her photo—banner-style—very much visible in her same-name website. She looks, to me, cold in the softly-hued picture, but comely, a counterpoint to her dad’s crassness. If you look harder, as I did, you may sense an unyielding, not reaching out, quietly go-getting stance with dare-you eyes: a Trump personified, every bit her father’s proud, all-visible protégé.

Despite the calculated prepossessing physical qualities, Ms Trump could not halt the fading of her label. Some observers and members of the media attribute it to the gathering momentum of the #grabyourwallet movement, a grassroots effort that “tracks and boycotts retailers that sell Trump family products as well as corporate leaders who enabled the political rise of the Trump family through fundraising and/or endorsements.” But that, I think, is only a catalyst. Ultimately, a foundation of good designs could survive the storm. In the end, as her father’s sidekick with the aim of acquiring the highest security clearance for the White House, Ivanka Trump has only herself to blame.