How Ivanka Trump used the Republican convention as a fashion show

Clad in a pale pink, knee-length gown, Ivanka Trump introduced her father to Americans as the Republican nominee for president on Wednesday night. As she echoed his self-promotional style, the four-day long convention seemingly doubled as a fashion show for her clothing brand.

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“Shop Ivanka’s look from her #RNC speech,” the younger Trump tweeted on Thursday, the day after her speech, along with a link to a dress from her own collection on the Macy’s website.

The “Sleeveless Studded Sheath Dress”, a lookalike of the one Ivanka wore during her address, sold out on both Macy’s and Nordstrom by Friday evening. The two dresses were the same color, but with slight differences in details. On her lifestyle site, she wrote it was “coming soon” to her regular Ivanka Trump collection.

Like her father’s line of clothing, the dress is labelled as imported.

Priced at $138, the pastel pink dress from Ivanka Trump’s tweet contrasted against her the outfit worn by her stepmother, Melania Trump – a $2,190 white dress by Roksanda Ilincic, a Serbian fashion designer based in London.

Ivanka Trump sported a white floral dress on day three of the convention that was also from her eponymous collection – though on her site she linked to a “similar style” priced at $158 rather than the exact dress she wore. On other days of the convention, she accessorized with Ivanka Trump shoes or an Ivanka Trump handbag.

Ivanka’s speech highlighted her personal focus on working women while she wore an outfit that average Janes could feasibly purchase from a local department store. Outside of her father’s political sphere, Ivanka is working on a book called Women Who Work: Rewriting the Rules for Success, available next March, and she started a social media campaign called #WomenWhoWork in 2014. Its goal is to redefine the idea of women with careers.

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One of the four Trump children who spoke, Ivanka was compared with her stepmother – for the different nature of their speeches and for their positions within the Trump family – by the New York Times, namely for emulating the antiquated “old-fashioned wife, but a modern professional daughter” value system.

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Ivanka emphasized that her father would fight for equal pay for women and affordable, accessible childcare, which are typically Democratic values and not traditionally part of the Republican platform. She praised Donald Trump’s treatment of women and minorities and was hailed as one of his “best assets” by onlookers in Cleveland.

While some criticized Ivanka for attempting to distract from her father’s controversial positions on women, especially after the plagiarism snafu with Melania’s speech and an upset by Ted Cruz, CNN wondered if the Trump children had saved the convention.

The reactions to Ivanka’s tweet linking to her clothing line were equally mixed, with some praising her smart marketing and for creating an affordable fashion line while others criticized the decision.

“Telling, if least important, way Ivanka cynically exploits her role as white washer to white power campaign,” Clara Jeffery, editor-in-chief of Mother Jones, tweeted.