World
January 22, 2021
WASHINGTON: Time’s run out: Outgoing first lady Melania Trump did not carry out out one last first-lady duty by inviting incoming first lady Jill Biden to tea and a tour of the White House family quarters. Having failed to do so before she and President Donald Trump fly off to Florida early on Jan. 20, the day Joe Biden is sworn in as the 46th President of the United States, making the snub the first deliberate break in the 100-year-old first ladies’ transfer-of-power tradition in decades. “In modern history, there has always been an invitation, this goes back to at least Bess Truman and Mamie Eisenhower (in 1952),” says Kate Andersen Brower, author of “First Women: The Grace and Power of America’s Modern First Ladies.”
10 best inauguration ball gowns: From Michelle Obama to Mamie Eisenhower Naomi May
When Dolley Madison, wife of the fourth President, James Madison, hosted the first Inauguration Ball in 1809, she sported a scoop-necked, hand-embroidered cream velvet gown with a long and winding train. According to one attendee, Madison’s ensemble “answered all my ideas of royalty.”
In the years since First Ladies have followed in Madison’s footsteps, embracing the grandeur of the Ball while also setting the tone of their agenda by painting a visual narrative of the incoming administration.
In some cases, the cost of the gown worn to the Ball has made the biggest splash. To make an economical statement amid a recession in 1977, Rosalynn Carter recycled an off-the-rack Mary Matise for Jimmae frock which she’d worn twice before; while in 1981 and 1985, financial boom years in America, Nancy Reagan opted for gowns by American couturier, Jamas Galanos, who once famously