Katie Zacharia kicked off her first White House press briefing by appearing ten minutes late and keeping it beautifully brief—clad in a double-breasted suit, looking like she took a wrong turn on the way to the Capital Yacht Club

The White House hasn’t had a press secretary since August, making this press briefing less of a routine update and more of a rare wildlife sighting. A lawyer and a former Fox News host, Katie Zacharia stepped into the Jimmy Choos of predecessor Karoline Leavitt with the poise of a receptionist receiving Bernard Arnault on behalf of her CEO for the first time. Making her grand, dramatically delayed entrance, she pierced the room’s anticipatory air in a register reserved for pre-schoolers, or golden retrievers: “Good morning”. It was delivered with a “good” chirped in full governess-level zeal, and a “morning” that could have been a whistling kettle on the boil—a lift on the first syllable and a shrill on the second. A parent-teacher conference energy became even more pronounced the moment her family entered the room, prompted by a question on how she intended to navigate a cross-country commute while raising four children in California. Without high-aggression cadence, she made Ms Leavitt look like a tiger mom.

To be sure, those two words themselves were ordinary, but they were operating in a completely different social register from the room she was standing in. We half expected her to follow up with “and what do we say to that, children?” But even before she said a word, at the precise moment the door opened to let her in, we already saw something off-key. Ms Zacharia emerged in a dark skirt suit—navy or black, it was hard to tell under the harsh lighting—anchored by six oddly gaudy, patterned gold buttons. We thought she was a White House guest-relations officer now working on the Love Boat. Or a passenger going to dine at the captain’s table. The brand responsible for her attire has not yet been disclosed, but those buttons (with only the last two functional and fastened) did a tremendous amount of work here. Gold-buttoned navy blazers and double-breasted jackets have a long history of borrowing from naval uniforms. But once that style leaves its military context, it often migrates into the world of leisure, hospitality, and affluent recreation.

We were certain that we saw, while waiting a whole ten minutes for her to appear, the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room. But when she strutted out, our brain told us Caribbean cruise embarkation lounge. Once both the outfit and the chirpy “good morning” landed together, the effect compounded. The clothing and the voice were suddenly telling the same story. We were expecting, after the “Good Morning”, “We’ll be departing Baltimore at noon, and the captain’s gala dinner begins at seven.” A complete character was created before the briefing had even begun. Throughout the televised session, the camera framed her up to her chest. There was a lot to take in. What stood out to us was the white V-neck blouse under the jacket. It came with a collar that was, in fact, a pussy bow, but left untied. That length of fabric was sort of twisted at the centre, where her highly visible jugular notch was, with one end left hanging over her collarbone and mostly hidden behind the right lapel, while the other, draped over her shoulder and concealed somewhere under the jacket. Two stray ends of the same intention, anchored by the pulse at her throat.

What work was the untied bow doing? We weren’t sure it improved the already-saying-something jacket. Sure, the fabric band underscored her face and drew a sort of bridge between the two sides of her cascading locks, but what did it say about the wearer that the hair had not already blurted out? Both were in the way, but the hair truly stole the show. As Ms Zacharia was reading from straight off a script, with all the spontaneous passion of a Scoot flight attendant demonstrating a seatbelt, and then looking up intermittently to flash a toothy smile, her hair had quite a life of its own. Hair is one of those elements that fashion photography loves and live performance often punishes. A photograph captures a single, controlled moment. A press briefing is a repetitive physical action. The head looks down, up, front, left, and right, and the hair is part of that multidirectional choreography. Each element of her hair said softness and ease. But she was standing behind one of the most symbolically loaded podiums in the world, reading prepared remarks. Ms Zacharia was not sitting for Annie Leibovitz.

Whether it is appreciable or not, the new press secretary did present a recognisable aesthetic language: it’s been called the “Mar-a-Lago face”. But we think it extended to her entire turnout. Classic Washington dressing has historically prized restraint, seriousness, institutional anonymity, even for a well-heeled power broker and Washington mainstay such as Huma Abedin. The Mar-a-Lago version is something far closer to visibility, definition, glamour—always overt, always more topping than the dish needed. We were told it is confidence through presentation. And then we see Kimberly Guilfoyle (who has been asked, we learned in this press briefing, to resign. And she has). It is a style that looks and feels imported from a different ecosystem. When the camera caught her, Ms Zacharia appeared like someone who had emerged from the culture of a Palm Beach fundraiser rather than from the culture of a White House briefing room. The excess of polish and performative friendliness hit like a stray champagne cork.

We had no real expectations as we began the long wait for the briefing to begin. Our interest was not born of any sudden fascination with America’s troubling domestic affairs, but because we had been such a fan of Karoline Leavitt and wanted to see who had the good fortune to succeed her. We were surprised that, in a setting that people expected to be adversarial, serious, and combative, the tonal mismatch became so delightfully comic. It was like watching Pete Hegseth walking into a Pentagon briefing about testosterone testing and starting with the vocal setting of a kindergarten teacher welcoming children to finger-painting hour. But perhaps what was even more fascinating was what we learned after the briefing. A news flash from The Washington Post led us to the discovery that there is apparently no record of an active or expired bar license for Katie Zacharia in any U.S. jurisdiction. Her lawyerly response to reporters asking which state bar exam she passed only added fuel to the fire. She glibly replied: “When I moved to China.” It turns out that she and Karoline Leavitt have one thing in common: China. One wears made in China, the other took her bar exam there.

Screen shots: nbcnews/YouTube