We hadn’t spoken too much in the year prior to the election, save for the obligatory “Happy Birthday” and fill-in-the-blank holiday greeting. It was bizarre for me to watch, as someone who knows Soriano. The negatives were ugly: Soriano and Villa both received death threats. The positives were extremely positive for Villa and Soriano: Villa’s album skyrocketed to become number one on the music charts. Like most things with the election, people’s response to Soriano’s dress was extreme on both sides. I think the dress is such a hot-button topic because here was an artist not doing protest art, but instead pro-Trump art. I’m not saying that it doesn’t exist, but it is startlingly low in volume when compared to other “anti” periods in history. This may have to do with the fact that, in general, there has been a lack of protest art against Trump. I still find it fascinating that it is a continued point of discussion on both sides of the aisle. It’s been almost five months since the “MAGA-dress” made its debut. Like I said: it made me feel numb and, frankly, it paralyzed me for a few months. It is a very strange feeling when half of the people you know are yelling for a friend’s head on a platter and the other half are suddenly praising him like a God. In the case of knowing the designer behind the “Make America Great Again” dress, it has proved to be an almost numbing experience. This wasn’t necessarily by choice, but it has worked out pretty well when it comes to understanding the current political mood.
I have close friends on both sides of the political spectrum. Call it bragging, but it has its downsides. If “six degrees of separation” was a contest or game, I would be someone who accidentally won all the time. People from all walks of life, backgrounds, and everything in between make up a collage that surprises even me at times. I consider myself incredibly wealthy when it comes to my friends. With my wonderfully strange and varied group of friends, I was only mildly surprised to soon find out that the designer was someone I had not only profiled for magazines before, but who I also considered a friend: Andre Soriano. My phone started going off on February 17th, 2017 with friends texting me photos of singer-songwriter Joy Villa wearing a pro-Donald Trump “Make America Great Again” dress on the Grammy Awards red carpet.