JENNI AVI
US first lady Melania Trump was in Africa last week for humanitarian reasons, but she also attempted to resurrect Ralph Lauren’s now-defunct Safari clothing line. On a short safari Pith helmets – also known as topees, according to The Fairchild Dictionary of Fashion – were originally made from a cork-like material called sholapith and designed to provide protection from the sun while allowing for ventilation.
But the pith helmet’s historical legacy goes beyond European cork varietals. The headgear was standard-issue for 19th century British officers in India and Africa, making it a potent symbol of colonial rule.
They have long since been abandoned, making them nearly cartoonish in their connotations today (or actually cartoonish: when TinTin went to Congo in 1931, he wore a pith helmet).
This makes the helmet an odd choice for a first lady supposedly on a goodwill trip – but precisely what you would expect from the one currently in the White House. Did she wear it with the intention of offending?
Given the first lady’s legacy as a 1990s-era fashion model (not to mention the wife of a man who reportedly referred to African countries as “shitholes”), her look was spot-on. Mrs Trump, after all, was working in fashion when Ralph Lauren’s Safari collection had magazine ads depicting white models cradling lion cubs. During the same time, Banana Republic stores had vintage Jeeps “crashed” into their fronts.
In an oral history of Banana Republic (the store, not the questionable moniker), the store’s former production manager recalled the “safari craze” of the late 1980s – a sort of shopping suburban interpretation of fashion photographer Peter Beard’s shots of Veruschka posing with a rifle over her shoulders. (The stores apparently carried pith helme).
“Having flocked to movies like Out of Africa, Romancing the Stone and especially the Indiana Jones films, Americans were nuts about khaki twill and far-flung, steamy destinations,” wrote Robert Klara. “For those who couldn’t afford a ticket to Sri Lanka, Banana Republic’s mall stores offered a substitute of sorts.”
All of these totems of Western pop culture – Banana Republic’s “safari craze,” Ralph Lauren’s well-appointed tents, Peter Beard’s fashion shoots, Karen Blixen’s Out of Africa – are problematic because they exoticise and generalise the people and places surrounding their white subjects.
Melania’s pith helmet and its accompanying clothing seem to celebrate this legacy, whether knowingly or not. They fit perfectly with the first lady’s tradition of dressing for her role, as the New Yorker’s Jia Tolentino once put it, “as if she were a paper doll, every outfit a costume.”
Costumes are frequently offensive, and this one of a white Westerner in Africa is no exception. But is it surprising? Not even a little bit.
