The secret message stitched into Melania Trump’s garments at Jimmy Carter’s funeral that explain her strikingly somber mood

Melania Trump certainly didn’t look happy to be back in Washington DC.

Just eleven days before her husband’s inauguration, the mood seemed a bit grim as she accompanied her husband through the nave of the Washington National Cathedral and took her place at the end of a pew in the second row for the late president’s state funeral. Jimmy Carter.

With no close neighbors to talk to, either in the front or the back, Melania sat in silence as Trump chatted animatedly with his former enemy, President Barack Obama.

Melania, meanwhile, looked oblivious, frozen even, as she stared unmoved by what was happening around her.

She seemed completely uninterested in catching up with fellow members of the most exclusive club – the former First Ladies – sitting nearby.

Melania’s ceremony seemed quite extravagant, even by the standards of a state funeral, while the absurdity of her oversized white collar – with a neoclassical image of kissing lovers in black and white print – could almost have been an expression of mocking contempt.

But when it comes to Melania, there’s always an element of surprise. She had, of course, memorably worn gray instead of the usual black for the funeral of Carter’s late wife Rosalynn in 2023.

Now she’s confounded her critics again — this time with an outfit that had a hidden meaning that only she, and perhaps her stylist, would ever really know.

Melania seemed completely uninterested in catching up with fellow members of the most exclusive club, the former First Ladies, who sat just a short distance away.

Melania defied convention at Rosalynn Carter’s funeral in 2023, choosing to wear gray instead of traditional black.

The long black wool coat with a belt – and the white collar that not so subtly peeks out from underneath – were two pieces from a unique three-way collaboration between in-house designer Pierpaolo Piccioli and Jun Takahashi of the Japanese label Undercover (specialized in streetwear and experimental tailoring) and a group called the Movement for the Emancipation of Poetry, whose members paste lyrical lines on the walls and monuments of Italian cities.

For this look, I’m told, Melania dug into her archives (instead of running to a designer’s door), for the two pieces from Valentino’s Fall 2019 collection.

In that show, titled “Valentino in Love,” Piccioli had built an illuminated billboard at the end of the runway with the words: “The people you love become ghosts inside you and that’s how you keep them alive.”

The audience found a small book of verse on each seat. And it was explained that Piccioli, with a touch of ‘undercover’, had chosen lines from this special anthology to hide in the clothes, so that only the wearer knew what they were hiding and what was written.

What thoughts lay behind the fashion pieces Melania chose last week?

Only she would know the answer, but I think it is very likely that, as with her demure behavior, the decision to wear this particular outfit must have had something to do with the memory of mother Amalija Knavs.

Amlija’s death a year ago to the day of President Carter’s state funeral last week was a life-changing moment for the model turned political partner.

A mother she described as her “dear friend and an irreplaceable treasure” had been an important, if barely visible, presence in Melania’s life.

Amalija and Melania’s father became an almost full-time resident of the White House.

Like Michelle Obama’s mother, Marian Robinson, Amalija was tasked with bringing some normalcy to the cocoon-like existence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue for both her daughter and grandson Barron.

Unlike Marian, however, Amalija was rarely paraded on the political stage.

Few outside the DC bubble knew she was there at all, and like most other things in Melania’s private life, she remained just that: private.

Amlija’s death a year ago to the day of President Carter’s state funeral last week was a life-changing moment for the model turned political partner. (Photo: Melania Trump with her mother at Olympus Fashion Week fall in New York City in 2004).

In the photo: Melania at the funeral service of her mother Amalija Knavs on January 18, 2024.

Melania’s decision to deliver the eulogy to a packed congregation at Amalija’s funeral in Palm Beach was a rare occasion that summoned the resolve to confront her natural aversion to public speaking.

On the anniversary of her death, Amalija would undoubtedly have been on her daughter’s thoughts, especially as Melania prepares for a second leading role on the biggest political stage of all.

It was written large on her face.

Melania refused to use the sad birthday as an excuse to avoid the occasion, or blame it on a “scheduling conflict” like Michelle Obama did, and instead decided it was another moment to defy expectation — which is kind of has become a habit.