Melania Trump in a Jackie Kennedy-Style Suit: Dolce & Gabbana in the Rose Garden, at the Signing of an Executive Order on Women's Health

In the White House Rose Garden, an executive order on women's health was being signed. Fashion editors were looking somewhere else. Melania Trump wore a two-piece Dolce & Gabbana suit in wool with a graphic, mottled pattern, a crossover jacket and a straight knee-length skirt. On her feet - Christian Louboutin pumps in water snake leather.

The order is no small thing. It covers research into and treatment of endometriosis, infertility, menopause and cardiovascular disease in women. It provides for a dedicated women's health division within the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and a White House task force. Whether it becomes policy or stays a ceremony in a garden will be shown by budgets, not photographs.

The suit, on the other hand, has a clear pedigree. The sixties cut - a short, structured jacket and skirt - is the outfit with which Jackie Kennedy became the yardstick of style for an American first lady. The most famous is the pink suit of November 22, 1963 in Dallas, the day John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Today it is kept in the US National Archives and may not be publicly displayed before 2103.

After Jackie, the suit was worn by Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama, each in her own way and with her own message. Melania, a former model born in Sevnica, in what was then Yugoslavia, speaks this wordless language fluently. Her choice is a classic that needs no explaining: a first lady who wants to look like an institution, not a person.

The question is whether anyone will read the order with as much attention as they zoomed in on the jacket and the pumps. Women with endometriosis often wait years for a diagnosis. A sixties cut doesn't fix that.