Melania Trump's outfit choices are a 'how not to' in fashion diplomacy

In many cases, those messages can include paying homage or respect to a host country or culture, or, as Julie Bishop demonstrated effectively time and again, showcasing talent from one's own country.

Fashion diplomacy takes planning and a degree of subtlety, so that the overall effect is courtesy, not caricature. And while Melania Trump has the planning thing down pat, she fails dismally when it comes to the subtlety piece of the play.

Boarding Air Force One for the trip to London, the first lady wore a £2560 ($4811) Gucci dress adorned with London landmarks including Big Ben and the Tower Bridge. The dress screamed, "I am going to London, England! Do you know where that is?" and elicited all the eye-rolling one would expect from such a naff choice to kick off a state visit.

Although Mrs Trump scores a few points for at least getting the city right, a much smarter choice would have been to wear an up-and-coming British designer such as Grace Wales Bonner, who designed Meghan, Duchess of Sussex's "baby reveal" dress, or even Richard Quinn, whose show the Queen herself attended at fashion week last year.

As much as Gucci's Alessandro Michele deserves praise for his Cruise collection that carried a strong feminist and pro-choice message when it debuted in Rome last week, Mrs Trump's wearing of a Gucci-does-London dress does nothing for either brand (Michele's or her own). It's lazy and it's trite.

Although Mrs Trump's outfit for stepping off the plane after the seven-hour flight was slightly more subtle in that it was a British designer (Burberry: tick) and had the right colourway (blue, white, red of the Union Jack: tick), it elicited comparisons in some publications to a British Airways flight attendant's uniform.

Contrast Mrs Trump's brand of whack-you-in-the-face fashion diplomacy with how Meghan conducted herself during her and Prince Harry's tour of Australia. Fashionably speaking, the Duchess (and her staff) did their homework, choosing a mix of established and emerging Australian designers - but never resorting to tropes or stereotypes about Australia.

While it's true that Princess Diana was photographed in a koala jumper by legendary designer Jenny Kee that the Australian government gifted to her and Prince Charles for their wedding, the late princess knew better to wear the jumper at Windsor, not Wollongong.

Speaking of Princess Diana, comparisons are already being drawn between Mrs Trump's cream outfit, worn to meet Prince Charles and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, and one worn by Diana in 1995. While it's touching whenever Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge or Meghan pay homage to their late mother-in-law, the first lady doing it, intentionally or otherwise, feels ... icky.

If the opening day of the UK tour is anything to go by, time is not improving the fashion fortunes of the first lady, whose travelling outfits have drawn accusations ranging from cultural appropriation to insensitivity towards marginalised groups.

For a 2017 state dinner hosted by Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing, she donned a Gucci dress inspired by the traditional Chinese cheongsam style. And on her solo trip to Africa last year, her outfits included a pants-and-jacket ensemble that made her look, as the New York Times described it, "like a character straight from Out of Africa crossed with Belloq, the nefarious Frenchman from Raiders of the Lost Ark".

And who can forget one of her most notorious gaffes, the $50 Zara anorak with the words "I really don't care, do u?" that Mrs Trump wore to visit immigrant children in detention in Texas. Not to mention her continued support for Dolce and Gabbana despite the brand being on the nose in China, after it caused offence for an ad in which a model attempts to eat pizza with chopsticks, and in the fashion world more broadly.

As Washington Post fashion critic Robin Givhan described it, "the first lady sometimes appears to be dressing for a fashion-shoot version of the event - a kind of heightened reality of an already rather surreal circumstance".

And that's the point. The Trump administration and the accompanying state visits, with their pomp and almost vaudevillian nature (case in point: the New York Times correspondent who was forced to wear her wedding gown when the strict dress code left her no choice), don't need another sideshow in the first lady's wardrobe.

Mrs Trump would do better homage to her hosts by toning it down from an 11 to, say, a six. A little flag dressing here, a few local designers there are things that can not only impress hosts but make a tangible difference to the fashion industry in the country one is visiting. And that's the true definition of diplomacy.