Jill Biden has never been quite the fashionista that, say, Melania Trump was. After all, Melania was a model and Jill was an educator, so you’d expect them to dress very differently from one another. Nonetheless, though, both women have been First Lady of the United States, a position which often involves throwing together a killer outfit and attending boring state functions.
For the most part, Jill Biden dresses well enough…not exactly haut couture, but she mostly manages to look good while supporting her husband. Every now and then, though, she decides to get wild and wear something a little more avant-garde. And when that happens, the result is the worst fashion disasters that the White House has ever seen.
Don’t believe it? Keep reading to learn about Jill Biden’s biggest fashion disasters!
Little mailbox on the prairie
In 2020, all of us were doing our best to survive the COVID-19 pandemic with our sanity intact. Jill Biden decided to do her part by encouraging her Instagram followers to send her some good, old-fashioned snail mail. To sell the idea and also lean into how adorably old-fashioned the whole thing was, she decided to rock some cottagecore. That’s all the rage, right? Unfortunately, this fashion choice ended up backfiring on Biden in several different ways.
For example, some particularly cruel social media users online pointed out how her bodice and upper arm areas looked a bit like a stretched diaper. Others compared the dress to paper towels (not much better), and those with a keen eye for fashion pointed out that Biden wore the dress too high…it went up to her neckline but was designed to be worn off the shoulder.
Above all of this was the fact that the outfit looked deliberately old-fashioned. The FLOTUS was admittedly going for an old-timey look, but considering that critics kept saying that her husband was too old to be president, dressing in her best 19th-century-looking finery was not the best decision Jill Biden could have made.
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The digital camouflage dress
It’s a well-known fact that Jill Biden is a veteran teacher who really knows her way around the classroom. Normally, she also knows how to dress for the classroom without making her students wonder whether she is capable of properly dressing herself. However, starting in 2023, Biden began wearing an outfit to teach and meet students in that looks like the kind of camouflage that a Minecraft character might wear.
It’s weird enough just due to the styling…the combination of collared frock, belted waist, and button front makes for a dress that seems to be having an identity crisis. Mostly, though, online critics reacted to the strange patterns and coloration of the dress. It’s earth tones meets pixel art, and the longer you look at the image, the more it seems like Biden is cosplaying a tree changing colors in an 8-bit video game.
A dress inspired by…bugs?
At this point, you might be tempted to defend Jill Biden because many politicians and their spouses have stylists picking out the outfits they wear to various functions. Because of that, it’s tempting to blame any potential fashion faux pas on the stylist rather than the person wearing the dress. But Jill Biden has previously taken pride in picking out what she wears, and that means she has nobody but herself to blame for the dress she wore to the 2015 Lincoln Awards.
There’s nothing wrong with the cut or color…honestly, this shade of green looks good on the FLOTUS. But the black tulle on her dress looks a lot like she is covered by a swarm of spiders. This creates a distracting visual effect and makes it look like Biden was on her way to a Halloween function and embracing her inner goth goddess.
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Wearing an old Christmas tree for New Year’s Eve?
One of Jill Biden’s weirder fashion mistakes didn’t occur in public but exclusively on camera. In 2023, she made a virtual appearance during the televised holiday event that is quite a mouthful to say: “Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve with Ryan Seacrest.” For this appearance, Biden went with something that was likely meant to evoke colorful flowers. The final result was pretty hideous, though, prompting criticism from all quarters.
For example, erstwhile Trump supporter Roger Stone took to X (formerly Twitter) to bash Jill Biden’s outfit. His criticism was relatively simple: that she “is no Melania Trump.” However, criticism from Stone arguably doesn’t mean that much because his own fashion sense frequently has internet users comparing him to the Penguin, Batman’s erstwhile nemesis.
Even for Biden’s biggest fans, though, it was tough to defend this dress. It looked for all the world like the Biden family Christmas tree puked this up and Jill decided to wear it. We normally wait until after the new year, but this is one Christmas tree we were happy to see the Bidens take down and throw away!