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Nancy Pelosi and ‘Big Coat Energy’

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (right) and Senate Minority Leader Senator Chuck Schumer (left) walked out of the West Wing to speak to members of the media outside of the White House Tuesday. Andrew Harnik/Associated Press

Tuesday’s on-camera White House meeting of President Trump, Vice President Mike Pence, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi was notably tense, and the Internet responded accordingly. The entire Oval Office drama received the meme treatment, with Pence’s bizarre closed-eye meditation getting special attention.

But it was Pelosi’s fashionable White House exit — the California Democrat wore a high-collared asymmetrical coat and pair of sunglasses — that set social media ablaze.

“Has anybody figured what coat this is she’s wearing?” Barry Jenkins, the Academy Award-winning director and co-writer of “Moonlight,” tweeted of Pelosi’s rust-colored jacket. “I waited to ask this question, let the seriousness of the situation be properly discussed but... that color is LEGIT and we need to know this.

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“What I love about this coat is what it says about the supposed impotence of fashion,” Jenkins continued. “From the asymmetrical front to the high collar, the strong yet unstrained shoulder and, of course, that COLOR — a deeply serene yet emphatic & ravishing color. This look kicks soooo much ass.”

Twitter immediately embarked on a fashion fact-finding mission.

At least one eagle-eyed Twitter user pointed out that the congresswoman had been photographed wearing the chic coat on another high-profile occasion: Barack Obama’s second Presidential Inauguration.

Other users offered up an Armani Cappotto Coat that was a different color, a red Jaeger Cocoon Coat (but the closure wasn’t quite right), and a very similar red Carolina Herrera Wool Funnel-Neck Coat (though, again, the neck isn’t quite the same).

Vanessa Friedman, the New York Times fashion director and chief fashion critic, was the one to finally track down the coat’s exact origins: a now out of production MaxMara design from a few years back.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Pelosi’s coat has now spawned at least two Twitter accounts of its own, with one, @NancyCoat, boasting in the bio of having “Big Coat Energy.”

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The search, meanwhile, is still on for Pelosi’s sunglasses, but they resemble Ray-Ban Erika Classics.

“And she knew exactly what she was doing wearing THIS coat on THIS day coming out of THAT room, placing THOSE shades on JUST so,” Jenkins concluded. “This is diplomacy in motion, soft power wielded like a machete through the diligent, decisive act of dressing. They’ve never been JUST clothes.”


Lillian Brown can be reached at lillian.brown@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @lilliangbrown.