Melania Trump's Journey From Runway To White House & Failed Legacy

Melania Trump, the supermodel-cum-former First Lady of the United States (US) has graced the coveted cover of Vogue magazine, the world's fashion bible, only once in her entire career as a supermodel and as First Lady of the United States.

Melania appeared on the cover of the magazine for the February 2005 issue, where she was photographed wearing her wedding dress. One month earlier, she married former US President Donald Trump at a ceremony in Palm Beach, Florida.

Born in April 1970 in Yugoslavia, Melania started modelling at age 16. She relocated to the US in 1996 and met Donald Trump at a fashion show in 1998. They started dating a year later.

In the year, 2000, Melania support her then-boyfriend, Trump during his first candidacy for president. In 2001, she received a green card that granted her permanent residency in America.

First Lady Melania Trump tours the site of the Giza Pyramids on Saturday, October 6, 2018, in Cairo, Egypt. /VOGUE MAGAZINE

Melania is a mother of one, an 18-year-old teen son with whom she welcomed in 2006 with Donald Trump. Baron Trump is currently a first-year university student at New York University.

During a talk with former Fox News journalist Megyn Kelly on The Megyn Kelly Show, Trump commented on his wife when asked about her absence from the 2024 campaign trail.

"She's doing very well. She's a very good woman," he said. "As you know, she was a very popular first lady. I mean, I go out to rallies and they have pictures of Melania with 'We love our first lady' with so many posters."

In responding to the former president, Kelly questioned how Biden's White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre could be featured in the magazine but not Melania Trump during the ex-first lady's time at the White House.

"Do you believe they never put her on Vogue, on the cover of Vogue? And they just they just let Karine Jean-Pierre in there?" Kelly posed.

Unlike her predecessor, Michelle Obama and other previous holders of the title, the former president also questioned the lack of a Vogue cover for Melania Trump, a former model, when she was in Washington, DC as the First Lady of the USA.

"Can you believe it? Can you believe it? She was on the cover of Vogue before she met me," the former president exclaimed, adding. "But once I said I'm running for president, that was, that was the end of the cover."

"And it's so sad. But she doesn't care," he continued. "She's been on the cover of the magazines for a long time, and she was on the cover of Vogue before. And she was very friendly with Vogue's top editor, Anna Wintour. But once I ran for politics, that was the end of that. And that's OK."

In May 2022, Melania accused the magazine of bias after first lady Jill Biden appeared on the August 2021 cover, just months after moving into the White House. Since then, Dr. Jill, the outgoing title holder, has appeared twice in her four-year stint as the hostess of the White House.

"They're biased and they have likes and dislikes, and it's so obvious," she told Fox Nation in one of her first interviews after leaving the White House, adding "And I think American people and everyone sees it. It was their decision, and I have much more important things to do — and I did in the White House — than being on the cover of Vogue."

This begs the question, what is Melania Trump known for other than her not-so-successful modelling career and a one-term, stay-at-home First Lady of polarized America (2017-2021)? Her 'be best' initiative didn't win the hearts of Americans. It flopped on arrival. 

Her 2018 image-repair tour of Africa only added salt to the wound. Amidst political turmoil in the US, Melania embarked on her first solo official trip, where she visited Ghana, Malawi, Kenya, and Egypt in partnership with the United States Agency for International Development, with a specific focus on implementing programs for children in developing countries. 

During her much-photographed visit to Kenya, Viral Tea couldn’t help but notice that her chosen attire had some pretty strange undertones, leaning heavily on “safari” attire many called stereotypical, and even donning an optic-white pith helmet for a Safari tour in Kenya, either blithely unaware of or choosing to ignore that head covering’s colonialist history.

Pith helmets – so-called because they are made of the material shola pith – were worn by European explorers and imperial administrators in Africa, parts of Asia and the Middle East in the 19th century before being adopted by military officers, rapidly becoming a symbol of status – and oppression.

Melania Trump wearing a pith helmet at Nairobi National Park on October 5, 2018. /GETTY IMAGES

And then when she touched down in Egypt in October 2018, many couldn’t help but notice her choice of ensemble for the appearance—a cream suit, white button-up, black tie, and matching fedora hat, seemed similarly drawn from 'Out of Africa', which is a film based on a book set in 1937. 

Netizens quickly drew up clever comparisons, some recalling the outfits worn by Michael Jackson in “Smooth Criminal,” Dr. René Belloq in Indiana Jones, and even the resort casual wear worn by the villainous Dr. Hannibal Lecter.

On Wednesday, October 2, 2024, Melania's revelation that her forthcoming memoir included a full-throated defence of abortion rights, an issue her husband Trump repeatedly flip-flopped on during his presidential campaign, and which left people on both sides of the issue less than impressed.

“Restricting a woman’s right to choose whether to terminate an unwanted pregnancy is the same as denying her control over her own body,” Melania wrote in her memoir. “I have carried this belief with me throughout my entire adult life.”

Melania also defended the right to abortion later on in pregnancy – a procedure that her husband has repeatedly demonized. Less than one per cent of abortions occur at or past 21 weeks of gestation.

“Sadly for the women across America, Mrs Trump’s husband firmly disagrees with her and is the reason that more than one in three American women live under a Trump abortion ban that threatens their health, their freedom and their lives,” a campaign spokesperson for Vice President Kamala Harris, Sarafina Chitika, said.