MAGA Has Changed American Style. Who Defines It Now?

Eleven years ago yesterday, Donald Trump lit upon the border town of Laredo, Texas, wearing for the very first time a baseball hat that declared, begged, demanded: MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN. It was white with navy embroidery—the more zealous red came later—with a brim just as wide and flat as a grandpa’s golfing cap. In the prelapsarian days of 2015, when our would-be dictator was mostly a punch line, hipsters in Williamsburg started wearing MAGA hats as a joke. They sold out on Trump’s official website and at the store in Trump Tower. “Trump’s Campaign Hat Becomes Ironic Summer Accessory,” Ashley Parker reported in the New York Times Style section.

One decade, one year, and one day later, the red cap has become the red line of our divided society: Wear it and you are either embraced or shunned. There is no neutral reaction—even in Spain. Ferran Torres, the Barcelonan forward who scored the championship-clinching goal in the World Cup final, wore a red “Make Spain Great Again” cap during a victory parade in Madrid, sparking retweets from the White House and derision in El País. Today, the president distributes MAGA hats from the Oval Office Study, which he maliciously calls the Monica Lewinsky Room and operates like a theme park gift shop. (Payment is accepted in the form of crypto and Boeing 747s.)

There could hardly be a more vivid example of what front-row habitués call the “power of fashion.” By that, we—yes, I consider myself a card-carrying fashion person—mean that clothes don’t just conceal the body, they reveal the mind. They can express individuality or, more often, collectivity: I am this kind of person; I belong to that tribe. And MAGA understands that better than anyone. Certainly better than the Democrats. You might call it the fashion of power.

So begins Vanity Fair’s 2026 Style Issue.

Pulitzer Prize–winning critic Robin Givhan picks up on this idea in “Radical Chic”, which posits that MAGA has hijacked fashion to evangelize its own rigid, retro vision of America, ­particularly in her hometown of Washington, DC. There are only two genders but many ­ounces of hairspray.

Elsewhere in this issue, my former Vogue colleague Tonne Goodman and the photographer Luis Alberto Rodriguez offer a modern take on classic American style archetypes: hippies, suits, a ­society swan, and a cowboy alongside clean girls, baddies, and a looksmaxxer. My ­favorite group is the preppies, for which we cast nine Vanity Fair writers and editors.

What Style Issue would be complete without a Best Dressed List? Ours is not to be confused with the International Best Dressed List, the august register founded by Eleanor Lambert and steered by my predecessor Graydon Carter, with editors Aimée Bell, Amy Fine Collins (who appears in this portfolio), and the late, great ­Reinaldo Herrera, though we hope it carries on the original spirit. The selections were made by Vanity Fair’s José Criales-Unzueta, Lindsey Underwood, and Derek C. Blasberg, who also contributed a very colorful oral history of Bungalow 8 with an even more colorful headline (“The 8 Ball”).

José wrote more than a half dozen stories for this issue—by the time you read this, he better be on vacation—including the profile of Marc Jacobs, our unconventional, undeniable cover star. Marc reinvents himself more often than Madonna (and perhaps even more successfully), and this summer began a new chapter following the announcement of LVMH’s sale of his company. This is his first extensive interview since, and Marc answered all of José’s questions with the kind of humor, candor, and resilience that reminds us why he is still our most interesting American designer. I am so thrilled that Anna Weyant, one of Marc’s favorite artists and mine, painted his portrait for our cover.

A few weeks before this issue went to print, we were discussing how Vanity Fair should mark America’s 250th anniversary. We already had plans to photograph model Anok Yai, an Egypt-born South Sudanese top model and naturalized American citizen. Who better to represent the American spirit? The star-spangled images by Haitian photographer Philip-Daniel Ducasse became our July Fourth digital cover and now, by popular demand, a special print edition. You’ll see that Anok wears only the US flag. Hats off to that.

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Fashion Editor: Nicole Chapoteau. Hair products by Bumble and Bumble. Makeup products by Armani Beauty. Lashes by Elora Lane. Nail enamel by Essie. Hair by Tiffany Blake. Makeup by Sheika Daley. Manicure by Aja Walton. Tailor, Majors. Produced on location by Boom Productions. For details, go to VF.com/credits.