Did Melania's jacket hide a message? And do u really care?

“Whaaaaa!?” was the collective reaction to photos of the first lady, Melania Trump, visiting an immigrant child detention centre in Texas on Thursday wearing an oversize army coat from Zara on which the following words were scrawled: “I REALLY DON’T CARE, DO U?” And just like that, the Trump presidency found a new motto, taking over from the campaign’s Make America Great Again mantra.

“It’s a jacket, there was no hidden message,” the first lady’s communications director, Stephanie Grisham, said. “I hope the media isn’t going to choose to focus on her wardrobe.”

That hope has proved to be in vain because, for once, it looked like a White House communications director spoke the plain truth: the message was certainly not hidden, it was literally written across the first lady’s back. And she chose to sport this message to visit unaccompanied migrant children, some of whom had been separated from their parents due to a widely criticised policy from the Trump administration.

The first lady herself had appeared to criticise the policy when she put out a statement earlier this week that she “hates to see children separated from their families”. At the time, this was seen as a condemnation of her husband’s policy, but perhaps she meant that she literally hates to see those children. I don’t really care, do u?

As the media went into meltdown over what is already known as jacketgate, Grisham huffily tweeted a further comment: “Today’s visit w the children affected @flotus greatly. If media would spend their time & energy on her actions & efforts to help kids – rather than speculate & focus on her wardrobe – we could get so much accomplished on behalf of children. #SheCares #ItsJustAJacket.”

But is it just a jacket? This is not the first time an outfit of Melania’s has prompted fevered interpretation. There was the Gucci pussy-bow blouse she wore after the infamous pussygate tapes were released, in which her husband was recorded bragging that he likes to grab women by the aforementioned anatomical part. Then there was the white trouser suit, an outfit associated with female empowerment, she wore for her first public appearance after the allegations emerged about her husband’s affair with the porn star Stormy Daniels.

But it’s never clear if the first lady understands the irony of her clothes or whether we are imposing irony on her. Is she spinning us or are we spinning ourselves?

“There is the fashion rule: once is a fluke; twice is a coincidence; but three times? That’s a trend. At this point, I don’t think there’s any way all this is an accident,” says Vanessa Friedman, the fashion director of the New York Times.

The jacket is also different from her previous fashion faux pas in that, as well as featuring actual words, it’s not like anything the extremely fashion-conscious and high-spending Melania would normally wear. When she wore ridiculously high heels in April to visit victims of Hurricane Harvey in Texas, the look was absurd, but of a piece with her usual wardrobe. Does she keep this $39 Zara slogan jacket in her closet next to her $50,000 floral Dolce and Gabbana coat? And why did she need a coat in DC in June – temperature on Thursday: 23C (74F) – anyway?

“We know she does buy her own clothes and has final say over them, even if a stylist selects them. She has agency over her appearances. She made the decision to put that jacket on,” says Friedman.

Despite the first lady’s office insisting there was no message, the president swiftly contradicted that and tweeted on Thursday night that the jacket “refers to the Fake News Media. Melania has learned how dishonest they, and she truly no longer cares!” Others suggested she is showing, despite her statement earlier this week, that she is on the same side as the president. The tenaciously optimistic few who still see her as a rebel within the administration have suggested the message is actually directed at her husband.

Whoever the petulant message was aimed at, Melania used a trip to meet incarcerated children to send it, which is not something Eleanor Roosevelt, Jackie Kennedy or any first lady in history before her ever did.

Another possibility is that this was yet another example of the Trump administration distracting from something by causing chaos elsewhere. And there is plenty they might want to distract people from, including the ongoing Russia probe and the president’s plans to target welfare programmes which serve more than 42 million Americans.

Friedman says: “I think in this case she is just as smart as we give her credit for. What the jacket reflects, in a more general sense, is that when it comes to some of the conventions of her role, Mrs Trump is as willing to break the rules as her husband.”

Part of the reason Melania’s clothes are so excitedly decoded is because she herself hardly speaks. She had taken her coat off by the time she walked into the New Hope Children’s Centre in McAllen, Texas, but it was impossible to tell from anything she said during her visit what she thinks of the political situation.

When an employee of the facility told her the average length of stay for unaccompanied children aged 12-17 is 42-45 days, she replied: “That’s great!” Her advice to one group of unaccompanied children, many of whom are around the same age as her son Barron, was: “Be kind and nice to each other, OK?” And to another group of child detainees, she had a simple message: “Good luck!”