Melania Trump wasn’t always busy “quoting” other First Lady speeches verbatim and revealing badly designed logos of new public initiatives. We all know someone who’s made the questionable choice of marrying someone who’s… not ideal (to say the least). At this point, with all the recent photos and videos of her attitude towards Mr. Trump, at the very least we can choose to admire her stick-to-itness. People change, but this article is less about what Melania Trump has the opportunity to change into and more about the path that led her to where she is now. Let’s look at Melania Trump’s past and who she was when she was young.
1. Melania Trump’s Family
Melania Trump was born in Novo Mesto, Slovenia to a manager of an automotive company and a mother who worked as a patternmaker at a children’s clothing manufacturer. Melania Trump is particularly fond of her mother’s profession, attributing her interest in fashion and modelling to her mother, who worked in the industry.
2. Melania’s Modelling Career
Melania Trump started modelling early. Since the age of five, Melania modelled the clothes that her mother made at work. This early experience paid off, and at the age of 18 she signed to an Italian modelling agency, and soon thereafter was the runner-up at a Slovenian modelling contest.
At 26, she moved to New York, where she continued her modelling career, appearing in provocative photoshoots for Max (France), GQ (Britain), Harper’s Bazaar (Bulgaria), and Vanity Fair (Italy). She’s not the first or last First Lady to appear in a fashion magazine, but she certainly holds the title for the most revealing photoshoot.
3. Meeting and Marrying Donald Trump
Melania Trump met Donald (then, a public personality and real estate mogul) in 1998, and they got married seven years later. Throughout their relationship, Melania continued her modelling career, making her husband very proud that he was married to a model.
4. Modelling Still Plays a Role in Her Life
Although Melania Trump’s modelling career is officially over (at least during Donald Trump’s presidency), you can still see her modelling roots show in her day-to-day life. She’s always immaculately dressed. What’s more, her official First Lady portrait clearly references her modelling past. While some of the previous First Lady portraits felt like a mix between a LinkedIn profile picture and a stylised magazine cover photo shoot, Melania Trump (or her photographer) went all in. It’s a head-on portrait that was harshly lit, heavily airbrushed, and clearly taking inspiration from Nancy Regan’s portrait (because you can’t stop on plagiarising First Lady speeches, you also have to use their portraits as references).
5. The Photographer that Discovered Her Lost Interest
The photographer that originally discovered Melania Trump and helped her get her first modelling contract eventually lost interest in photographing the model. Many models and photographers go through the process, but Stane Jerko had some choice words to explain the reason he stopped working with Melania Trump. “She lacked energy, a certain charm that if you have, you transmit it through your eyes, through your personality,” he said.
And here I thought that her blasé attitude and general disinterest in everything around her came from having to live with Donald. No, turns out it was there all along.
6. Melania Trump Knows 5 Languages
Because of her multilingual parents (Slovenian and German), and how much she had to spend time abroad during her modelling career, Melania Trump became fluent in five different languages. It is said that she can communicate freely in Slovenian, English, French, Spanish, and German.
7. She had a Jewellery and Makeup Line
In 2010 Melania Trump launched a timepiece jewellery line on QVC. That same year she also launched a high-end cosmetics line. The latest information available on them shows that they brought $15k and $50k respectively in 2016. A long way from Fenti and KKW, but you could argue that she was busy on the campaign trail with Donald. Yeah, I’m sure it’s that…