Karlie Kloss revealed on Instagram earlier this week that she and her longtime boyfriend, Joshua Kushner, are engaged, and fans have been celebrating in their comments sections ever since. Both Karlie and Joshua’s engagement posts are flooded with messages from well-wishers, friends, and family members—including Ivanka Trump, who’s married to Joshua’s brother, Jared.
Ivanka posted not one but two Instagram comments congratulating Joshua and Karlie on their engagement. The one she left on Joshua’s page is pretty standard: “So incredibly happy for you Josh,” she wrote. “You and Karlie are blessed to have found one another. Here’s to a lifetime of love, laughter + adventure for you both!”
PHOTO: Instagram/Joshua Kushner
But the comment she left on Karlie’s page has the Internet buzzing. “So, so happy for you and Josh,” she wrote. “I feel blessed to have you as a sister (!!!) Karlie and look forward to the decades of happy memories we will create together as a family!” Yes, you’re reading that second sentence correctly: Ivanka calls Karlie her sister.
Check out the comment for yourself, below:
PHOTO: Instagram/Karlie Kloss
Ivanka isn’t technically wrong; after Karlie marries Joshua, they will, in fact, be sister-in-laws. Even still, people have mixed emotions about her declaration. Below, just a few reactions from Twitter:
“I love you more than I have words to express. Josh, you’re my best friend and my soulmate. I can’t wait for forever together. Yes a million times over,” Karlie wrote in her original Instagram post announcing her engagement to Joshua.
She opened up about their relationship in W magazine earlier this year, too, saying, “I’m incredibly busy, but I love what I do, and my boyfriend’s incredibly busy, but he loves what he does too. I think it’s important to make time to be with your loved ones—to work hard, play hard. That’s the way I live my life.”
Just over a year-and-a-half into Donald Trump’s presidency, Ivanka Trump announced that she’s shuttering her namesake fashion line.
In many ways, it’s been a long time coming. Marketed as a purveyor of affordable basics for working women since it launched in 2007, with its face being Trump herself, the brand—once valued at $100 million—has experienced a considerable decline since its founder left to join her father’s administration in January 2017. Ivanka Trump, the brand, has taken one hit after the next as many shoppers and retailers have distanced themselves from its products, with pieces increasingly popping up on the resale market post-election.
Then, there were the boycotts.
Grab Your Wallet and similar campaigns against Trump’s products, which have gained steam thanks to the power of social media, have contributed in part. Their goal is to be “a centralized resource for the flexing of consumer power,” specifically as it pertains to Trump-affiliated companies. Shannon Coulter, a San Francisco-based digital marketing expert, is at the center of Grab Your Wallet—as the initiative’s co-founder, she and Sue Atencio helped launch this movement in 2016, encouraging people to use their spending to protest then-candidate Trump following the release of that now-infamous Access Hollywood tape (hence the name). The hashtag quickly went viral, and the Grab Your Wallet website was launched as a resource for customers to check whether the places they shopped had a relationship with the Trump family, as well as to provide tips for people who wanted to call companies with ties to them. When the first Women’s March took place in 2017, 350,000 people visited the site during a 24-hour period, according to the New York Times.
A year-and-a half later, Coulter and Grab Your Wallet have what she described on Twitter as “a win.”
PHOTO: The Washington Post via Getty Images
Shannon Coulter, co-founder of Grab Your Wallet.
“All over the world, women have so much consumer power and influence and their awareness of that influence is growing,” Coulter tells Glamour. “I’ve watched so many individual women successfully get companies to make significant, positive changes over the last twenty months simply by communicating with them. It’s been dazzling to behold and it makes me believe we could use that power to help remake the world into one that puts a premium on equity, peace, education, and care. I think that’s only a dream for as long as we fail to roll up our sleeves and do it.”
Coulter, for one, doesn’t believe Ivanka Trump, the person, when she says the decision to close Ivanka Trump, the brand, had nothing to do with sales. “I don’t think any Trump would willingly shut down a profitable company with a bright future,” she argues. “I’ve seen several indications that Ivanka Trump’s line has probably been performing poorly for some time on several measures, especially brand. I think Ivanka likely wanted to avoid the embarrassment of more retailers dropping her line in the future. At the consumer level, the Trump brand has become permanently politicized and she knows it.”
In 2015, the Ivanka Trump line was reportedly raking in $100 million annually, per public statements from G-III, the company that made its clothing. Then, the election happened: Ivanka joined her father in Washington, and formally stepped away from the company’s day-to-day operations—though, she never divested her ownership, and still made $5 million from the company in 2017, according to financial disclosure documents.
That’s when things started to take a turn, as consumers increasingly found it difficult to separate Ivanka Trump, the product, from Ivanka Trump, the political operative.
PHOTO: MANDEL NGAN
Ivanka Trump.
In an interview with Refinery 29 from early 2017, Abigail Klem, president of Ivanka Trump, claimed the brand had its best-performing weeks in its history following President Trump’s inauguration. According to the e-commerce search platform Lyst, sales of the brand spiked by more than 700 percent in February 2017, compared to February 2016.
Around that same time, the backlash began to strike Ivanka Trump’s stockists. Nordstrom became the first major U.S. retailer to announce it would no longer carry the brand, in February 2017, citing poor sales: “We’ve said all along we make buying decisions based on performance,” a spokesperson told Racked at the time. According to an e-mail sent to employees that week, though, Nordstrom executives reportedly did express disagreement with President Trump’s policies—his executive order restricting travel from seven Muslim-majority countries, in particular, writing: “We currently employ more than 76,000 people who comprise different races, ethnicities, and genders. It’s important that we reiterate our values to all of you and make it clear that we support each of our employees.”
PHOTO: MANDEL NGAN
Trump, wearing an Ivanka Trump dress.
“By then, a dozen companies had already announced they had severed ties with the Trump brand, but when Nordstrom announced it was dropping Ivanka, I knew the movement had achieved real momentum,” Coulter says, noting how a New York Times news item quoted an anonymous source from a third-party consumer data company who said that Grab Your Wallet kept coming up in Nordstrom customer feedback.
Other retailers were feeling the heat, too. A source at TJ Maxx tells Glamour that the retailer received hundreds of angry letters and phone calls in 2017 because it sold Ivanka Trump products; the retailer instructed its employees via a note to throw out signs promoting the label in stores. And for those stockists that continued to carry Ivanka Trump in the post-#GrabYourWallet landscape, the pressure never really eased up: Just this month, Canada-based Hudson’s Bay announced it was dropping the brand—in a statement, it offered: “As part of our regular course of business, we review our merchandise offerings and make appropriate changes.” Coulter says that Hudson’s Bay was the 40th company to be removed from Grab Your Wallet’s master list.
While a statement from the Ivanka Trump brand insisted on strong sales through 2018, when the company launched its own e-commerce, the numbers publicly available—the company is privately held, so not many are—suggest a different story.
PHOTO: Spencer Platt
Ivanka Trump shoes, available for purchase.
Following the reported surge that followed the Inauguration, Lyst reported that order growth for Ivanka Trump dropped to 288 percent in March 2017, then to 114 percent in May 2017, and then to 6 percent in July 2017; in August 2017, order volume was down negative one percent compared to August 2016. This downward spiral continued into 2018, as sales for Ivanka Trump products online at Amazon, Macy’s, Bloomingdale’s, and Zappos fell almost 45% in June 2018, compared to June 2017, according to data from Rakuten Intelligence reported by the Wall Street Journal.
Simultaneously, Trump couldn’t distance herself from allegations that she was using her new political capital to profit unethically from her White House role. For instance, she wore a $10,800 bracelet from her fine jewelry collection for an appearance on “60 Minutes” in 2016 promoting her father’s presidential win—and the Ivanka Trump brand sent out a press release for it, presumably to drum up sales. Then, when news broke that Nordstrom was dropping the label, President Trump sent out a Tweet blasting the retailer for the decision on his person account, which was then retweeted by the official @POTUS Twitter handle. As recently as May 2018, there were reports that the First Daughter had won new trademarks from China—13 in three months—which set in motion a firestorm from ethics experts questioning whether Trump was using her influence with foreign governments for personal gain. Meanwhile, the brand contended with controversies of its own unrelated to its founder’s political affiliations: In the spring of 2017, news broke that the factories in China where Ivanka Trump products were being produced were facing labor violations.
PHOTO: Bloomberg
Trump, wearing Ivanka Trump shoes.
To be sure, the Ivanka Trump brand is far from the first company to be at the receiving end of negative attention—Uber, United, and Chick-fil-A are but a handful of examples—but not all consumer-driven boycotts have had nearly as big impact on a company.
“Social media provides a platform for people to have these conversations that didn’t exist 10 years ago,” Barbara E. Kahn, a professor of marketing at the Jay H. Baker Retailing Center at The Wharton School, says. Still, negative attention doesn’t necessarily mean the death knell for a brand: “There could be lot of negative activity on social media, and that doesn’t necessarily translate into changes in purchase behavior or sales.”
Think of how Chick-fil-A enraged many after it publicized its anti-gay marriage position in 2012—the company barely registered a hit, beyond some bad PR. Many fashion brands and retailers have faced accusations of sweatshop labor that have resulted in boycotts, but it hasn’t truly affected their bottom lines much.
“Boycotts are not created equal,” Bruce Hicks of The Alliant Group/Houston, a longtime public relations and crisis management consultant, explains. “What comes into play is how important the product is to people lives. Is it a crucial product? Is it an important brand to people? With Ivanka Trump you have a brand that is insignificant, it’s not a commodity product. People don’t need to buy her shoes, there are a lot of choices out there. Mix that up with emotion over President Trump, and it’s easy for people to make the decision to spend their dollars elsewhere.”
PHOTO: Chip Somodevilla
Trump, wearing an Ivanka Trump dress.
With the Ivanka Trump brand closing its doors, the Grab Your Wallet campaign strikes off one of its main targets. What comes next? According to Coulter, the fight isn’t over—not even close.
“The Grab Your Wallet community seems really excited to continue doing this,” she says. “Our goal now is to develop a more comprehensive, sophisticated knowledge base about the moral and ethical dimensions of consumer brands and then disseminate that information in highly impactful ways. We’re also looking at the possibility of partnering with organizations that advocate for fair wages, labor rights, and equity in hiring in order to continue making an impact.”
The retailers that remained on the Grab Your Wallet boycott list for continuing to carry Ivanka Trump through its final season will be removed, per Coulter, “although we will be making a note that they failed to divest from the Trump brand prior to Ivanka’s company being shut down.”
According to The Wall Street Journal, Abigail Klem, president of the Ivanka Trump brand, announced the closing to the company’s 18 employees on Tuesday, with Ivanka Trump, the person, expected to speak to them later in the day.
In a statement issued to Glamour, Klem said she was proud of the company they built and product they sold, noting that the business had “seen strong sales since the brand’s inception, which continued throughout this year with the successful launch of our rapidly growing e-commerce business.”
“I know that this was a very difficult decision for Ivanka, and I am very grateful for the opportunity to have led such a talented and committed team,” Klem added.
Ivanka Trump, the person, also released a statement, which was obtained by Glamour: “When we first started this brand, no one could have predicted the success that we would achieve. After 17 months in Washington, I do not know when or if I will ever return to the business, but I do know that my focus for the foreseeable future will be the work I am doing here in Washington, so making this decision now is the only fair outcome for my team and partners. I am beyond grateful for the work of our incredible team who has inspired so many women; each other and myself included. While we will not continue our mission together, I know that each of them will thrive in their next chapter.”
PHOTO: Chip Somodevilla
Trump, 36, left the apparel and accessories brand in January 2017, to join President Trump’s administration. Though she cut official managerial ties with the company, she was still often photographed in Washington, D.C., wearing Ivanka Trump–branded clothing. Despite ongoing boycotts and criticism, signage went up inside Trump Tower in New York in August 2017, announcing the first stand-alone Ivanka Trump store, which would open later that year.
Because the business is privately owned, financial records and sales information aren’t available for the Ivanka Trump fashion brand; however, retailers that have dropped the brand have cited poor sales as a reason. From June 2017 to June 2018, WSJ reports that online sales for the label on Amazon, Macy’s Inc., Bloomingdale’s, and Zappos.com were down almost 45 percent, per data from Rakuten Intelligence.
Shannon Coulter, cofounder of #GrabYourWallet, which urges retailers carrying brands associated with the Trump family to cease business with them, celebrated the news of the Ivanka Trump brand closing on Twitter. “Yes, it’s true: Ivanka Trump is shuttering her fashion line,” she wrote. “Things may be close at the polls. They are not at the cash register. The big hearted, fair minded people hold the majority of the consumer power and we vote every single day.”
The banner photo on Ivanka Trump’s Twitter feed shows her holding a baby, tenderly nestled to her heart. But even as the president’s daughter visually projects the centrality of motherhood in her life, she’s being called to task for not speaking out publicly about the separation of immigrant children and parents at America’s borders.
The Democratic National Committee this week directly chastised Trump—a high-ranking advisor in her father’s administration—for remaining publicly quiet on the immigration debate despite her vow to serve as a voice for women and families.
“Children are being detained and separated from their families while senior administration official Ivanka Trump attends glamourous fundraisers for congressional Republicans,” the party said in a statement, referring to Trump’s Monday appearance with House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy.
“Ivanka Trump claims to be an advocate for families in the Trump administration, yet she’s nowhere to be found while men, women, and children are suffering on the American border from this administration’s inhumane family-separation policy,” the DNC broadside continued.
Trump occupies a unique spot in U.S. politics: In addition to her official self-description, which leads off with “wife, mother, sister, daughter,” she was a critical presidential campaign surrogate who went on to take a formal job in the new family business of running the country as an advisor to POTUS for “economic empowerment, workforce development & entrepreneurship,” her bio reads. That positioning both opens her up to criticism on the issue at hand and begs a broader question: How much responsibility does (or should) she bear for her father’s words and actions?
When Donald Trump accepted the Republican nomination for president in the summer of 2016, Ivanka was the much-anticipated opening act. Her duty was clear: To paint an empathetic picture of her dad—who’d slashed and burned his way through the primaries—as a man who cared about people, and about women in particular.
“Throughout my entire life, I have witnessed his empathy and generosity towards others, especially those who are suffering. It is just his way of being in your corner when you’re down,” she said from the podium at the Cleveland convention.
“As a mother myself, of three young children, I know how hard it is to work while raising a family. And I also know that I’m far more fortunate than most. American families need relief,” Trump said at the convention. “Policies that allow women with children to thrive should not be novelties, they should be the norm. Politicians talk about wage equality, but my father has made it a practice at his company throughout his entire career.”
Fast forwarding to the current day, Trump has eschewed public comment on the immigration crisis while other prominent women—notably including all five living first ladies—spoke out on the family separations.
Ivanka Trump’s public silence may be well reflective of a conscious choice to take up the searing issue of immigration enforcement with her father and individual lawmakers in private. GOP members of Congress told reporters the president on Tuesday night acknowledged speaking with his daughter about the impact of images showing detainees having their children wrested away from them. The White House subsequently confirmed to CNN that Trump had acted on her offer to speak directly to legislators on the topic.
When asked about the Democrats making an issue of Ivanka Trump’s absence from public discourse on one of the most intensely discussed—and highly unpopular—policies of the day, Republican National Committee spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany told Glamour in emailed comments that “no one wants to see families separated at the border, which is why the Trump administration encourages Congress to fix the broken loopholes forcing these separations.”
“For her part, Ivanka Trump will not let the media’s negativity deter her tireless work for women and families both at home and around the world.”
McEneny additionally credited Trump for creating “a fund at the World Bank for aspiring female entrepreneurs,” playing a key role in increasing the child tax credit, and continuing “her push for paid family leave, to name a few of the many important initiatives in her portfolio.”
In the case of GOP lawmakers and hopefuls caught between a conservative (read: pro-Trump) primary electorate and Democratic efforts to topple Republicans in November’s midterms, speaking out is somewhat of a gamble. This month, incumbent Republican Alabama Rep. Martha Roby saw herself forced into a primary runoff—a result analysts have attributed to her vigorous rejection of Trump during his run for president and which other candidates may chalk up as a cautionary tale.
As to why more Republicans haven’t challenged the president more aggressively on the detainee issue, given public sentiment, “It’s really the timing,” a noted GOP strategist explained to Glamour: Republicans are focused not only on the separations, but the future of the legal status of immigrants claiming protections under the tenets of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals or DACA program.
“That is a huge priority — not that these children are not a priority, but we have to get the president to stay on board with us to pass DACA, and then hopefully we’ll come out and start supporting the kids and their families,” the Republican said. “I’m sorry the kids aren’t getting the support that they probably deserve, but this is a strategy that we have to continue to implement through the week.”
And when it comes to Ivanka Trump, Anna Sampaio of Santa Clara University’s department of ethnic studies said critics are entirely justified in questioning why she has absented herself from the public arena at a time of national turmoil and whether she’s complicit, in part because she “has wrapped herself in the language of women’s rights, and by virtue of that she has gained a lot of political capital for herself, but also political cover for the Trump administration and the Republican Party generally.”
Trump’s actions deserve particular scrutiny, Sampaio continued, because the furor over immigration and the breaking up of families is “a clear moment” that represents “arguably one of the most important moments for women and children” since the president took office.
The president’s daughter may be taking heat for her dad’s behavior in some of the same ways First Lady Melania Trump has fielded criticism for what he chooses to do and how he acts.
But as for any pushback associated with Trump directly confronting her father, “This is a woman who’s got a lot of privilege and a lot of money and a lot of resources,” Sampaio said.
Barbara Underwood, New York state’s new Attorney General, filed a lawsuit this morning against President Donald Trump and three of his children—Ivanka, Don Jr., and Eric—alleging “persistently illegal conduct” connected to the Donald J. Trump Foundation. (Underwood assumed her role after Eric Schneiderman resigned following accusations of physical abuse by four women.)
Underwood has asked a court to dissolve the foundation and have its remaining assets distributed to other charities. She also wants Trump to pay $2.8 million in restitution and penalties.
“As our investigation reveals, the Trump Foundation was little more than a checkbook for payments from Mr. Trump or his businesses to nonprofits, regardless of their purpose or legality,” Underwood said in a statement. “This is not how private foundations should function and my office intends to hold the foundation accountable for its misuse of charitable assets.” She also said that she has notified the IRS and the Federal Election Commission about “possible violations” of tax law and federal campaign law.
For example, in 2007, he settled a dispute with the town of Palm Beach over code violations at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club. The town agreed to waive outstanding fines if Mar-a-Lago gave $100,000 to a charity. Instead, the money came from the foundation, as authorized by Trump himself.
The case also claims that the Foundation engaged in “unlawful political activity” in 2013 by cutting a $25,000 check to support the re-election of Republican Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi (R). At the time, Bondi’s office was considering whether to join an ongoing lawsuit by then NY AG Schneiderman alleging Trump had defrauded students at his now-defunct “Trump University.”
The suit accuses Trump of exploiting and misusing the Foundation to burnish his image during his run for president. It specifically says the charity broke rules against political activity by getting involved in an Iowa fundraiser for veterans that Trump held in 2016 instead of attending a Republican primary debate.
The three eldest Trump children are also named in the lawsuit because they have served as board members for years and as such are supposed to examine the allocation of funds to make sure they are not being misused. However, the suit states that this did not happen and that the board has actually not met since 1999.
Underwood is asking the court to bar Trump from serving as an officer of any New York charity or raising money for one for 10 years and to keep his three children from serving on non-profits or soliciting donations for them for one year. This could affect, for example, the Ivanka M. Trump Charitable Foundation which the First Daughter set up last year.
The Trumps have been frequent targets of accusations surrounding the use of the platform of the presidency for personal gain. The New York suit comes immediately after Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, both senior White House advisors, filed disclosure papers showing they pulled in at least $82 million in income in 2017.
Trump has already fired off two tweets about the suit calling the New York Democrats “sleazy,” honing in on Schneiderman (who did not, in fact, file the suit), and stating that he will not settle the case.
And the Trump Foundation released a statement that says, in part: “This is politics at its very worst. The Foundation has donated over $19 million to worthy charitable causes—more than it even received. The President himself—or through his companies—has contributed more than $8 million…The prior NYAG, who was recently forced to resign from office in disgrace, made it his stated mission to use this matter to not only advance his own political goals, but also for his own political fundraising. The acting NYAG’s recent statement that battling the White House is ‘the most important work (she) have ever done’ shows that such political attacks will continue unabated.”
Causing a Twitter frenzy seems to be a family tradition for the Trumps. Ivanka got herself into some seriously hot water last night after tweeting about Oprah Winfrey’s 2018 Golden Globes speech, saying, “Just saw @Oprah’s empowering & inspiring speech at last night’s #GoldenGlobes. Let’s all come together, women & men, & say #TIMESUP!”
Twitter, as you’d expect, was not having it. Almost immediately, people slammed the First Daughter for the tone-deaf, hypocritical tweet, particularly because she’s been silent about allegations of harassment and sexual misconduct that her own father faces. At least 15 women have accused Donald Trump of non-consensual groping and kissing, and an Access Hollywood video uncovered in 2016 captures lewd and misogynistic remarks Trump made about grabbing women by the genitals. Ivanka called her dad’s comments “inappropriate and offensive,” but has largely avoided talking about his behavior in depth.
Twitter users, including celebrities such as Alyssa Milano and Chrissy Teigen, had a few words for the First Daughter. Milano suggested Ivanka donate to Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund to support her father’s accusers, while Teigen responded with a simple, “Ew, go away.”
It’s not the first time the public has criticized Ivanka for her silence. Earlier this month, Meryl Streep told The New York Times that she wanted both Ivanka and Melania Trump “to speak” and address the allegations surrounding Trump. Others have blasted Ivanka for staying quiet during her father’s most problematic presidential moments—SNL even trolled her with a faux-ad for a perfume called “Complicit,” which called Ivanka out for standing by the Trump administration, despite identifying as a feminist.
If Ivanka noticed indirect references Winfrey made to the Trump administration by mentioning “corruption” and a press “under siege” in her speech, she certainly didn’t show it. Winfrey gave the speech on Sunday after receiving the Cecil B DeMille award at this year’s Golden Globes. Her words won her a standing ovation at the ceremony and sparked an #Oprah2020 hashtag—plus rumors of an actual presidential campaign. The White House has said it would “welcome” Winfrey as a 2020 contender.
