With classic, feminine shapes, Alice and Olivia’s spring/summer 2026 presentation would delight the White House press secretary to no end

We are so excited for Alice + Olivia’s spring/summer collection because we are confident that Karoline Leavitt would adore it. So strong and so American the designs are that it would be a real pity if the press secretary did not pour over the 45 shots of the brand’s marvelous look book, and swoon. Ms Leavitt is the epitome of the modern press-secretary. No other communicator of the White House’s policies or the president’s messages appears so positively splendid when facing the press corp, right behind the fashion-obscuring podium in the James S. Brady press briefing room. Her wardrobe choices, mostly imported and underscore Donald Trump’s so-admired trade policies, have been as noteworthy as her combative and unapologetically confrontational communication style. But her fashion is markedly placid even when her rhetoric isn’t.

This is where Alice + Olivia can come in to marry the two. Ms Leavitt is known to wear the New York-based brand in her exemplary attempt to go All-American. This season, Alice + Olivia, in fact, salutes the “American Woman”—the uniquely platitudinous title of the collection. At the brand’s installation-based presentation in New York’s City Hall of Records, guests were greeted by a goofy iteration of the Statue of Liberty (the model stood on the arcaded corridor on the second floor with what could be a nightdress, hanging to the first level, like Rapanzul’s hair), and a giant American flag that was the backdrop of the busy main tableaux (an oddity as the clothes did not enjoy the Made in USA tag). This was rather a political-rally-turned-fashion-show. A manufactured patriotism for those with a sudden urge to salute Uncle Sam. Miss Leavitt would not be out of place here. She would be delirious.

And what, exactly, would an American woman want to wear on home turf, these tariff-heady days? According to designer/founder of Alice + Olivia, Stacey Bendet, she, requires multiple looks as she plays many, many roles. She is a political operative, so she needs cropped Chanel-style suits; she is a mom, so she needs simple shirts and stripey pullovers, and sensible pants to bring her child to romp on White House lawns; she is a wife, she needs a sexy blazer with a vertebrae-exposing cut-out, and a bow to punctuate the small of her back for date nighs, and, in case there is a state dinner at the ballroom that’s now no longer large enough to entertain world leaders, she needs a massive floral gown, festooned with blooms and butterflies. The collection is imbued with an almost too old-fashioned sense of feminine elegance, featuring the kind of clothes scores of women dream of wearing to Mar-a-Lago or to play golf with the president.

The Alice + Olivia aesthetic perfectly encapsulates a specific, and increasingly visible, style of American womanhood that is often associated with the world of conservative politics and wealth, even when Ms Bendet described to the media that the collection is a tribute to women who shaped American culture, art, and style. But it’s not the vaguely edgy, minimalist effort of the New York gallerist, nor is it the understated quiet luxury of a tech CEO. It has its own set of codes: feminine and formal, old-timey, print-and colour-coordinated. Think Alina Habba or Laura Loomer. It is tempting to describe the pieces as a tad frumpy, but they are, in fact, a very precise and intentional expression of a style that is gaining prominence in a MAGA-fied world, where politics and fashion have become increasingly co-dependent—two peas in a very tight pod. Karoline Leavitt is, no doubt, already squeezed in there.

Photos: Alice + Olivia