While the first lady seemed less than keen to pick up the traditional fashion baton, Ivanka was happy to step in

• Donald Trump inauguration – live updates

In the Capitol rotunda, the incoming first lady was nowhere to be seen. Technically, Melania Trump was in attendance, but she chose to make herself almost invisible. Her dark boater hat was worn so low that it threw her entire face into shadow, and made eye contact with cameras or guests impossible. Matched with severe, high-necked tailoring it was a startlingly sombre fashion choice on what might have been expected to be a day of joy for the wife of the new president. Melania, who absented herself from the limelight for long stretches of Trump’s first term, seemed to show little more enthusiasm about the second. “Dark MAGA” and “mob wife at a funeral” were among the verdicts on social media.

The job description of a first lady, unwritten but widely understood, is to be the human face of an administration. Glamour is essential, but the first lady also stands for relatability, empathy and philanthropy. Melania has proved herself a disruptor. The savagery of her “I REALLY DON’T CARE. DO U?” jacket, worn on a visit to a child migrant detention centre in 2018, was a message directly aimed, she later said, at the “left-wing media”. The oddly doom-laden tone of Melania’s outfit at this, her husband’s second swearing-in, was thrown into sharp relief by the contrast with outgoing first lady, Dr Jill Biden, who stuck fast to the traditional Washington playbook, playing safe in a soft blow dry and peppy purple tailoring.