(CNN) When first lady Melania Trump first stepped out in front of the press Friday in Nairobi, Kenya, she was wearing an outfit suitable for the setting. She was at the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, ready to pet and bottle-feed baby elephants, who were prancing and playing with their caretakers on a large mound of red clay-like dirt, which is why the first lady's khaki jodhpur pants tucked into tall, brown leather riding boots, and crisp, white tailored shirt seemed appropriate, if a bit of a gamble.

While most people likely wouldn't want to pair thick, red-orange mud and splashing milk-drunk baby pachyderms with a white top, sartorially, Melania Trump is not most people.

But when she moved on to her next activity, a guided safari a half-hour later at the adjacent Nairobi National Park, the first lady had added an accessory to her get up: a pristine white pith helmet. It was very "Out of Africa," an homage perhaps to the fabled 1985 Meryl Streep and Robert Redford film, in which Streep stars as Karen Blixen, an independent woman who takes over a farm in rural Kenya in the 1920s.

However, with the hat, Trump's outfit might have tipped the scales, moving from a practical accessory dangerously close to costume territory evocative of colonialists.

The hat was widely used by European militaries in their colonies throughout Africa and in India, according to Gentleman's Gazette , and became a popular sun hat for civilian Europeans visiting or living in colonies in the 1930s. US President Theodore Roosevelt wore his pith helmet while on the Smithsonian-Roosevelt African Expedition after his presidency in 1909.

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