Few who have been to the White House come
away unimpressed with its imposing splendour and sumptuous glamour — a fitting
home for a man who is master of all he surveys.
But for Melania Trump, one just hopes it
won’t be a terrible comedown.
As Americans try to come to terms with the
astonishing prospect that Republican frontrunner Donald Trump really could
become the next U.S. president, curiosity about the woman who might be
America’s First Lady is growing.
As these new pictures make dazzlingly clear,
the former Slovenian supermodel is the couture-clad mistress of some of the
most lavishly appointed homes in America.
Most of the photos were taken in the
glittering bauble that tops the outspoken billionaire’s property tree — a vast
triplex apartment at the top of the 68-floor Trump Tower in Manhattan with
fabulous views across Central Park.
Designed to evoke the Palace of Versailles
(though even Louis XVI was never this garish), it boasts a cavernous hall of
mirrors, acres of marble set off by ‘24-carat gold and diamond accents’, and
ceilings hand-painted with cherubs and scenes from Greek myths.
Trump also owns Seven Springs, a huge mansion
outside New York in the upmarket hamlet of Bedford, which boasts 60 rooms, two
servants’ wings, 15 bedrooms, three swimming pools and 230 acres of land.
There’s another mansion in rural Virginia, a
huge house on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills and a vast waterside pile at
Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida.
Mrs Trump is certainly not embarrassed by the
ostentatiousness, regularly posting pictures of her extravagant existence on
social media.
At 45, 24 years younger than Trump, she has
for years had to put up with people sniggering that all she sees in him is a
great big dollar sign. Asked this week what it was that first attracted her to
him, Mrs Trump avoided the obvious trap.
His mind, his amazing mind,’ she said in her still thick Eastern European
accent, narrowing her kohl-covered blue eyes for extra emphasis.
That mind may yet propel the Trumps to the
White House, a remarkable achievement not just for him, but for a young woman
who came to the U.S. 19 years ago from the communist privations of the former
Yugoslavia.
The ambitious immigrant who became the third
Mrs Trump may yet become the first foreign-born First Lady since Louisa Adams,
the British-born wife of 1820s president John Quincy Adams.
First Ladies tend to fall into two categories: those content to look fragrant
and fade gently into the background, and those — such as Nancy Reagan, Hillary
Clinton and Eleanor Roosevelt — who make their presence felt not only in the
White House but also in government.
Mrs Trump’s virtual absence from the Trump
nomination campaign, barely opening her mouth when she does appear, has left
many convinced she would fall into the former First Lady category.
This week, she finally spoke out, perhaps
keen to dispel widespread assumptions that Trump married her for her looks
rather than her brains.
‘I’m not a “yes” person,’ she told Us Weekly
magazine in one of a clutch of interviews. ‘I give him my opinions.’ Sometimes,
he follows them, sometimes he doesn’t, she says. ‘Do I agree with him all the
time? No, I don’t, and I tell him that.’
While he’s on the campaign trail, they talk
on the phone several times a day and Melania will opine on political
developments.
Happily for marital harmony, she seems to
agree with Trump on his most provocative views. She defended his controversial
call to ban Muslims from entering the U.S., saying: ‘He wants to protect people
of America. What’s going on in the world, it’s very dangerous.’
As a fellow immigrant, she was asked, wasn’t she offended by Trump’s vitriolic
attacks on Mexican ‘illegals’ (he suggested most were rapists and
drug-dealers)?
No, she countered, she never dreamed of
staying in the U.S. illegally. She says she renewed her work visa every few
months until she could get permanent residency through a Green Card and
eventually U.S. citizenship.
Mrs Trump insists she is not a nagging wife,
which is just as well given Trump’s many perceived failings.
Asked to reveal her secret to a happy
marriage, she said simply: ‘Separate bathrooms.’
There will be plenty of those to spare in the
White House and the increasingly confident-sounding Trump — who has
commandingly won three of the first four state primaries — already talks of how
his wife would be an ‘amazing representative for our country’.
Mrs Trump has shrugged off any First Lady
talk, insisting her main priority is to be a mother to their nine-year-old son,
Barron.
She doesn’t even have a nanny, she says,
though she does have her own chef.
U.S.
pundits love to talk about the death of the American Dream as the economic
expectations of ordinary people stagnate. But Mrs Trump has certainly managed
it, coming a long way from modest roots in communist-era Yugoslavia.
The daughter of a car dealer, she grew up in
Sevnica, a quiet industrial town, where the family was wealthy enough to go
skiing in Austria.
Childhood friends remember Melanija Knavs, as she
was then called, as a tall, skinny, well-mannered and shy girl who was a
conscientious student.
She was 17 when a photographer spotted the 5ft 11in
beauty and persuaded her to try modelling.
By 18, she had signed with a Milan modelling agency
and was jetting between Paris and Italy on assignments, posing for
photographers such as Helmut Newton and Mario Testino, while taking a design
and architecture degree in what was now Slovenia.
Melania, who says she speaks five languages, changed
her name to the more Germanic ‘Knauss’ and moved to New York in 1996.
She met Trump two years later at a fashion industry
party. She was 28, he was 52 and recently separated from his second wife,
bit-part actress Marla Maples.
Trump’s first wife, Ivana, is Czech-born: East
European women clearly appeal to him.
Despite being on a date with another woman, he asked
Melania for her phone number. She played a little hard to get, demanding his
number instead and waiting three days before ringing him. They were soon an
item.
Posing regally in what could be called the
‘Trump-L’Oeil’ Versailles of their Manhattan palace, she looks and sounds the
picture of respectability.
The Trumps married in Palm Beach in 2005, a $1
million affair in which Melania wore a $100,000 Dior dress and guests ate a
50lb Grand Marnier wedding cake.
Their son Barron was born a year later and she
inherited four grown-up stepchildren.
She has launched a jewellery collection and skincare
range that included a $150-an ounce, caviar-infused moisturiser she said she
slathers on her son.
‘Melania is someone who can talk you down from a
ledge, whatever crisis you may be in,’ says Rachel Roy, a fashion designer
chum.
Friends say Mrs Trump is quiet and gracious, and has
a calming influence on her excitable husband. For that, if nothing else, we may
all one day be truly thankful.
Source : Daily Mail
