Politics
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Michelle Obama and Melania Trump's senses of fashion are very different - but is one actually more expensive than the other?
This week, Melania Trump found herself in yet another fashion scandal.
The first lady was spotted boarding a plane to Texas in sky-high stilettos, despite the fact that she was heading to an area devastated by Hurricane Harvey.
Public perception of Trump and the previous first lady, Michelle Obama, couldn't be more different. Fans of Obama paint her as a J. Crew-clad woman of the people. Meanwhile, Trump was slammed for a photoshoot in which she twirled a string of diamonds like spaghetti.
For fans of Trump, glitzy designer clothing is part of her appeal. Instagrams with thousands of followers track her every outfit. Far-right website Breitbart (which criticized Obama for wearing a $2,290 dress to meet the pope in 2015) wrote Trump was the "breakout star" of President Trump's first trip abroad, radiating "high fashion."
In an effort to see how accurate Trump's frivolous, filthy-rich reputation is in contrast to Obama's more down-to-earth image, we decided to recreate a theoretical "week in the life" of the two first ladies. We wanted to see if Trump was actually spending more than Obama, or if she was just a victim of bad press.
We compared seven iconic looks that Obama and Trump wore to similar events, from vacationing to campaigning, as well as their price tags. Here's how the two first ladies measure up and what it means for how Americans see them.