Looking at the Trump family assembled on stage in West Palm Beach last week, you might have thought they’d gathered for a cocktail party rather than a victory speech.

Sequins, shoulder pads and stilettos dominated in a line-up of plastic – and identikit – perfection.

Even Ivanka’s disco-esque blue crushed-velvet pantsuit, as ill-fitting as it was wrinkled, failed to add the pizzazz that might have lifted her above the group.

Following her husband’s historic re-election to the White House, it was left to Melania to raise the fashion game and assume in full her role as matriarch and consort of the Trump First Family.

Not for the first time, it was her clothes that told the story.

Revisiting a tried and trusted silhouette, Melania returned to Dior and another modern interpretation of the iconic ‘New Look’.

Though, instead of shopping her closet – as she did at July’s Republican National Convention, by recycling a red Dior skirt-suit – this was a debut for pieces from the designer’s latest fall collection.

The neat grey wool was a perceptive choice, highlighting a refashioned ‘new look’ for a new reign – with nod to Trump-friendly themes of opulence and history.

The double-breasted jacket with its flap pockets accentuated not only the careful proportions of the former, and now future, First Lady’s waist but the finely tuned tailoring.

This creation, hand-crafted in France, just happens to cost about $5,000. And amid a sea of American flags, dark suits and glamour-wear, Melania stood out and stood tall.

In 2016, still a new and inexperienced political spouse, Melania had floated onto the stage of her husband’s election night rally in a white off-the-shoulder silk crepe jumpsuit from Hillary Clinton’s go-to-designer Ralph Lauren.

The effect was more runway than presidential.

In the early hours of Wednesday morning last week, however, Melania projected the assured confidence of someone who was dressing for only one member of the audience: history.

The transformation of a woman once happy to pose atop a grand piano in a cleavage-baring minidress is one of the great evolutionary stories of what we now must acknowledge as the Trump Era.

Embracing thigh-high hems, leggy silhouettes, and plunging necklines, Melania spent the first decade of marriage to her media-mogul husband living up to her model credentials – and leaving no one in any doubt as to the physical assets that had propelled her from a Slovenian backwater to a 5th Avenue penthouse.

With a taste for the dramatic, she could be a gothic princess, enveloped in black satin and lace corsetry – as she was for a momentous appearance in May 2004 at the annual Met Gala. Or an all-American girl-next-door, sporting tight-fitting jeans and a plunging sheer baby-doll top to attend New York Fashion Week a few months later.

Melania might cringe when looking back over her pre-presidential fashion choices, but her step-family is probably less critical.

In fact, the other Trump women seem to have taken some inspiration – embracing the flesh and panache that many mainstream American women believe is appropriate when they have a figure to flaunt and money to burn.

Stepping tentatively into her role as the nation’s first wife, Melania’s style was initially erratic – moving from the effervescent architectural chic of her inaugural gown by couturier Hervé Pierre, to the militarized formality of a belted black sequined Michael Kors suit worn to her husband’s first address to Congress in March 2017.

Her appearance later that year in a bubble-gum pink midi-dress with exaggerated puff sleeves, by the Spanish designer Delpozo, for her first appearance at the United Nations seemed another demonstration that the briefing book did not always reach her in advance.

Yet, step by step, she mastered it, an achievement all the more remarkable given her status as Washington outsider.

Despite four years at the White House, Melania is aware that, like her husband, she is still not accepted as a true member of the nation’s most elite club.

When the ‘remarkable sisterhood’ of former First Ladies gathered for Rosalyn Carter’s funeral last year, the reaction was telling. Melania was absolutely entitled to be there, yet most assumed she would feel too daunted to attend.

In her new memoir – and perhaps unaware of how patronizing it might sound – Hillary Clinton admitted to having wondered if Melania would be ‘accepted’ at the service, comparing her to the ‘little kid at the birthday party who doesn’t know anyone and is waiting at the edge of the circle, hoping people are going to be nice.’

She was wrong. Melania’s understanding of her non-acceptance produced neither fear nor uncertainty but a perfectly calibrated act of sartorial defiance.

Eschewing tradition, she opted for a muted grey full-skirted Dior coatdress as striking for its tailoring as it was for its break with convention. In a sea of a black mourning, she stood completely alone. No one could have missed her unexpected inclusion at this stately event.

She took the same approach for the husband’s victory speech in the heat of Florida last week.

Unlike her stepdaughters, Melania got the memo that this was not a cocktail party. It was a moment for the history books. And, as we now expect, she dressed for the occasion.

Where once she had seemed just another bit-part in her husband’s retinue, Melania now stands fully poised atop his podium of presidential power.

Whatever happens in the course of the next four years, I think it is safe to conclude she has found her place at ‘the birthday party’.