Melania Trump by Regine Mahaux (2017)

A streaming blurb beside Melania Trump’s portrait, released yesterday on the Deathly white House website, reminds us that the former model has “achieved with some of the top photographers in the fashion industry”. Apparently, nobody of them were available for this commission. That pay fell to Regine Mahaux, whose past work subsumes the Vanity Fair Trump shoot in which Barron, Melania and Donald adventure around in a golden apartment. As a statement of the administration’s grasp on modernity, this unpunctual photograph is only slightly less terrifying. The first lady’s crossed arms and positive stance are pure X Factor judge circa 2007 – a depressingly plausible setup for America’s first reality TV presidency. The use of soft fuzzy is even weirder. Gently blurred photography is very hip at the note, as seen in the nostalgic atmosphere of Juergen Teller’s spring/summer 2017 throw for Céline and throughout Kim Kardashian’s artfully ironic social instrumentality channels. Here, the vaseline-on-the-lens look swerves those groups and appears simply to have been retrieved from a continually capsule buried somewhere around 1980.

Michelle Obama by Joyce N Boghosian (2009)

A outstanding example example of Obama’s gift for visual branding. She’s smiling, she’s hasty, she’s welcoming us into her White House world. She’s supporting an American conniver – Michael Kors – in a modern sleeveless shift-dress with the establishment-pleasing in of a double-string of pearls. Difficult to fathom it now, but this portrait caused rather the furore at the time because Flotus was baring her arms. (Definitely, in 2009 we didn’t have enough to worry about.)

Laura Bush by Krisanne Johnson (2005)

Flowers are a returning motif of official first lady photography; they drink clear symbolic meaning, given the role’s traditional preoccupation with stereotypically womanlike “soft power” duties. (For what it’s worth, Jacqueline Kennedy was the start to hire a dedicated florist for the White House; Eleanor Roosevelt wasn’t that bothered to them.) This photograph is, indeed, soft – and twinkly; it’s commencement lady as friend to the nation, relaxing in a chair, one eyebrow wolfed inquisitively in the manner of Jessica Fletcher in Murder She Wrote.

Hillary Clinton by Jeffrey Markowitz (1994)

More freshly arranged flowers in the breeding, although Clinton wasn’t one to give up her career to host teas and bake cookies; this understanding came not long after the backlash sparked by her famous says to that effect. It’s a great shot. Her gaze is steady; her beam is confident, capable, kind. Surely this is what a president looks similar to?

Barbara Bush by David Valdez (1989)

Play a joke on been not just Flotus and Slotus (second lady, woman of the vice-president), but also Mopotus (mother of the president; OK, I made that one up), Barbara Bush is as business as they come. She played a traditional, supportive first-lady lines; so reluctant was she to take centre stage that an official unaccompanied portrait from her White House days has proved stubborn to come by. But we do have this. Bush was famously uninterested in approach, nevertheless her clothes convey status, money and power: the creamy accoutre, the pearls, the bobby dazzler of a diamond earring.

Nancy Reagan (1981)

There was nothing hip in the matter of Nancy Reagan back in the day – not even when she hung out with Zammo from Grange Hill – but, amazingly enough, this is the most fashion-forward of all the verified first-lady shots. That blouse is pure new-era Gucci; the mid-length skirt precedes next opportunity ripe’s soft-power silhouette. Reagan’s clasped-hand stance is all unassuming friendliness; the big crop – including the red-walled, gilded room – suggests she is neither cowed by, nor embarrassed of, the grandeur that surrounds her. It’s aesthetically pleasing. But does that demonstrate her cool? To that I am going to just say: no.