According to intelligence from the White House, the president believes his staff should “have a certain look” and aspire to “be sharply dressed”. Men should wear a tie. Female colleagues have been told to “dress like a woman,” reports British newspaper The Financial Times. 

Whatever this new "dress code" means,  it will help to deflect “the opposition party” (the media) from the fine details of the day.

What better way to disguise your flailing incompetence at a press briefing, for example, than by wearing a tie of such exceptional ugliness that no one will really hear what you’re trying to say? , observes the F.T.

"The White House press secretary's, Sean Spicer, clumsy attempts to explain the botched military operations that led to the death of civilians and a Navy seal following a raid on Yemen last week were overlooked as focus fell instead on the diagonally striped monstrosity in poison yellow and navy tied around his neck."

Then there’s Mike Pence, who wears smarter white button-down shirts, electric-coloured ties and navy suits, with all the self-possession of a Weeble. Or secretary of defence James Mattis, cadaverous in camo. Attorney-general Jeff Sessions wears pocket-sized suits and ties in reflux yellow and spotted vermilion: he carries them both with the skittery, overly keen mien of a warm-up host.

Kellyanne Conway's efforts to look “like a woman” have turned the counsellor to the president "in the undisputed star of this fashion circus: a feisty, former cheerleader who, to judge by the state of her inauguration ensemble, takes her style inspiration from the Peruvian refugee Paddington Bear.

Read the full story about Trump's dress code in The Financial Times.