The fashion choices a person in politics makes are revealing. For men, it’s typically limited to the color and design of ties. For women, it’s more complicated. Democratic women tend to wear white on official occasions to remember the women’s suffrage movement. Vice President Kamala Harris wore a strand of pearls to her inauguration to represent the Black college sorority she belongs to. And former first lady Melania Trump famously wore a jacket bearing the words “I don’t really care. Do you?” when she went to tour a warehouse storing migrant children.
Dr. Jill Biden, the current First Lady, selected a very different message for her first official trip to Europe: “Love.”
Meeting British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his new wife Thursday, Dr. Biden wore a jacket she had worn when her husband, President Joe Biden, kicked off his campaign for the 2020 presidential election. The black jacket had the word “LOVE” outlined in beads emblazoned on the back.
“We’re bringing love from America,” she told reporters, according to the Associated Press. “This is a global conference and we are trying to bring unity across the globe and I think it’s needed right now, that people feel a sense of unity from all the countries and feel a sense hope after this year of the pandemic.”
The Bidens are in England for the G-7 Summit of world economic leaders, later traveling to Brussels, Belgium for a NATO meeting. Finally, they’re go to Germany, where President Biden will meet Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The message from Dr. Biden echoes a new spirit of cooperation from the United States towards its European allies, a group the previous administration repeatedly threatened to abandon as Donald Trump sought favor from Putin. It’s a not-so-subtle sign that there’s a new POTUS in town, with a less belligerent path of diplomacy.