US First Lady Melania Trump looks ready for summer in a $1,100 military-inspired dress as she joins Japanese Prime Minister's wife Akie Abe on tour of a historic mansion in Florida ::Intro
US First Lady Melania Trump toured a marble-bedecked and gold-plated Gilded Age mansion with her Japanese counterpart Akie Abe on Wednesday, amid the Japanese Prime Minister's recent visit to the U.S.
While President Donald Trump and Shinzo Abe golfed at the president's nearby country club, their wives visited Whitehall, a 75-room, 100,000-square-foot waterside retreat in Palm Beach, Florida.
Oil and railroad tycoon Henry Flager built the property as a wedding present for his third wife, Mary Lily Kenan Flagler. The Flaglers wintered there beginning in 1902, and it is now the centerpiece of the Flagler Museum.
Arriving in a motorcade from Mar-a-Lago, the president's own gold-plated mansion three miles away, Melania Trump and Akie Abe were greeted by Flagler's great grandson William Matthews, and museum Executive Director Erin Manning, who led them through a tour of the home, which historians say cost $4 million ($110 million today) to build.
Unlike their husbands, who have a jovial, golf buddy relationship, the first ladies smiled politely, quietly asked Manning questions and walked formally during the parts of their tour visible to the U.S. and Japanese press.
The U.S. first lady wore a $1,100 emerald green dress by Derek Lam and snakeskin designer heels during the visit, while Abe went for a dark dress with a floral print.
Trump kept her hair down in her usual straight style, and also wore her trademark smoky eye and nude lip.
During the Abes' visit to Florida last year, the first ladies visited a Japanese garden. They did not address reporters on Wednesday.
The Japanese first lady caused a bit of a controversy last year when it emerged that President Trump was convinced she didn't speak any English at all.
'So, I was seated next to the wife of Prime Minister Abe, who I think is a terrific guy, and she’s a terrific woman but doesn’t speak English,' he told the New York Times after a dinner in Germany among G20 leaders.
When reporter Maggie Haberman pushed him, asking: 'Like, nothing, right? Like zero?' the president answered: 'Like, not "hello."'
But a clip of the Japanese first lady giving a 15-minute keynote speech on a prior occasion promptly surfaced, leading to speculation that Abe had pretended not to speak English so as to avoid speaking with the U.S. president. Others, however, believed that Abe might not be entirely fluent in English and wanted to avoid making mistakes during the dinner. On Wednesday, Manning showed the first ladies the private railroad car Henry Flagler used to travel his Florida East Coast Railway, the line that opened up South Florida as it stretched from Jacksonville to Key West. They were also shown the bicycle-powered white wicker carriages the Flaglers' guests used to traverse the grounds. Flagler also founded Standard Oil with John D. Rockefeller. In the mansion's music room, they viewed a portrait of Mary Flagler wearing a long-pearl necklace that Manning says remains the most expensive piece Tiffany has ever created.
-dailymail.co.uk
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