Donald Trump Incorrectly Claims All D.C. Dress Shops Are Sold Out of Inauguration Gowns
At the Golden Globes on Sunday night, Meryl Streep’s acceptance speech for the Cecil B. DeMille Award called out President-elect Donald Trump for delivering one of the most stunning performances of the year. “It made its intended audience laugh and show their teeth. It was that moment when the person asking to sit in the most respected seat in our country imitated a disabled reporter. Someone he outranked in privilege, power, and the capacity to fight back,” the 67-year-old said to a crowd of fellow celebrities who reacted with cheers and a standing ovation.
The audience, filled to the brim with A-listers, appeared to support Streep (and therefore not Trump), and the politician responded to the “attack” from “liberal movie people” by saying he was, according to the New York Times, “not surprised.”
Yet Trump asserted, in a brief interview with the Times, that the apparent lack of support from Hollywood doesn’t mean that his upcoming inauguration won’t be star-studded. “We are going to have an unbelievable, perhaps record-setting turnout for the inauguration, and there will be plenty of movie and entertainment stars,” he insisted.
While that might be true (it remains to be seen), one thing that definitively is not is his follow-up statement. To further prove that the Jan. 20 event will yield a huge turnout, he claimed that “all the dress shops are sold out in Washington. It’s hard to find a great dress for this inauguration.”
Yet, as the Washington Post’s Emily Heil noticed, D.C. is actually home to hundreds of dress stores that carry plenty of styles fit for the upcoming inauguration.
Heil spoke to representatives of shops from high-end department stores to luxury boutiques to ask about dress supplies and found the president-elect’s remarks seem to be a stretch.
Martha Slagle, vice president and general manager of the Neiman Marcus store in Friendship Heights, said a ball attendee has “more than a thousand evening gowns to choose from” and the store is “stuffed with beautiful gowns.”
Krista Johnson, the owner of Georgetown designer-consignment shop Ella Rue, which stocks a number of high-end designers, shared, “We always have dresses. Unless a thousand people came in today, we’d still have choices.”
Another boutique owner argued it would be quite unlikely for dress shops in the U.S. capital to sell out. “It would be really difficult to achieve,” Lena Farouki said. “We’re a bigger city than people think.”
