Ever since Melania Trump assumed her perch in the East Wing, she’s looked as though she is not so much serving as First Lady as starring in a film about one. Part of the effect is thanks to the Hollywood-ready beauty that she comes by naturally, with added help from a proprietary caviar face liquid, blowouts, and other tricks of the beauty trade at a Manhattanite’s disposal. She has movie-star cheekbones and an innate smize. She could pass as a classic Bond girl or villain.

But she also dresses the part. Which part? Whichever part she is playing at any given moment. She’s the Jackie Onassis of the new millennium in a beehive and powder blue Ralph Lauren. She’s Mrs. Claus in a red and green tartan cape. She’s a be-khakied interloper in early 20th-century Egypt. She’s Sophia Loren in somber Dolce & Gabbana alongside the Pope. It doesn’t require much suspension of disbelief to look at photos of her—many of which are staged in front of monuments the majority of people will only ever encounter in the movies—and regard them as stills from the Melania Trump Cinematic Universe.

It’s human to play a part, to wear a costume and perform. We all do it, and politicians especially so. Melania’s choices are so often discomfiting because we’re used to First Ladies dressing in a version of the sober politician’s uniform: appropriate and professional, modest but not dowdy or cheap. And we’re especially used to Michelle Obama, who endured the same fervent sartorial scrutiny as Melania now does, with her J.Crew separates and well-researched fashion diplomacy.

Politicians might use their wardrobes to communicate messages and influence their likability quotient at first sight, but Mrs. Trump’s choices are often so literal in appearance that nuance or meaning seems to have been left behind in the actor’s trailer. In November of last year, for example, she wore a cheongsam-inspired gown by Gucci to a state dinner in China, eschewing a Chinese designer or Chinese-American one in favor of an luxury Italian house’s approximation. And as we look back this year, as we’re wont to do as it comes to a close, she’s only ratcheted up the costuming rather than settled into herself. In April, she was a noir femme fatale as she posed for photo-ops with President Macron. On her way to meet Hurricane Harvey relief workers in September, she was a feminine Tom Cruise in aviators and a bomber jacket (making Donald Trump her Goose). Recently, she wore a pith helmet in Kenya to play safari. A little scratching beneath the surface of the Old Hollywood look of it all could have prevented that hiccup, which was swiftly maligned as tone-deaf colonial kitsch.

By leaning into the costume for almost every major international appearance, the First Lady seems to be playing dress-up, rather than playing First Lady. In a way, though, her brand of thematic dressing is not completely empty of messaging. It is a reflection of her husband’s White House, as so many First Lady’s wardrobes have been a reflection of their husband’s political priorities: all over the place, yet image-obsessed to a fault. Dress for the job you want, not the job you have, as they say.

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