United States: six things to know about Melania Trump, the new first lady
What you need to know about the wife of Donald Trump, officially inaugurated 45th President of the United States, this Friday in Washington
It's Donald Trump's D-Day. The US president is sworn in this Friday in Washington. Beside him is his wife, Melania, a former model of Slovenian origin, described until now as a rather discreet and uneventful woman. Who is really the new American "first lady", the one who succeeds Michelle Obama?
1.Slovenia.
Melania Trump is the first wife of an American president to be born in a communist country. Born in the former Yugoslavia in 1970, she grew up in Slovenia, in the small town of Sevnica (5,000 inhabitants), with her parents, Amalija and Viktor Knavs, a former salesman in mechanics, passionate about cars and her sister eldest, Ines.
She seems to have cut ties with her native country. In a portrait dedicated to her "Vanity Fair", we learn that she only went to Slovenia once with her husband, before their marriage, to see her family, and that they only stayed there. three hours. However, his parents often come to visit him in America.
2.Mode
Ralph Lauren will ultimately dress Donald Trump's wife when she is inaugurated as President of the United States. A few days before the ceremony, the designers refused to dress the "first lady" ... Unheard of and a hell of a paradox: the entire life of Melania Trump, long brown hair, piercing blue eyes, 1.80 m, seems to be placed under the sign of fashion and glitter, even if her career as a top model never really took off.
Her mother, who was first in a textile factory, brought her fashion magazines from her professional trips to Europe. In high school, rather a good student, she took drawing and photography lessons and wanted to become a stylist. She began studying architecture and design, but meeting a famous Slovenian fashion photographer, Stane Jerko, would change her life. The latter spots her in the street and offers her her first shooting sessions.
She seized her chance and left her country in 1991, for Milan and Paris to begin a modeling career, before moving to New York at the age of 23. It was during Fashion Week in New York in 1998 that she met Donald Trump, her future husband, at a party given by the boss of a modeling agency.
3.Wedding
She is the third wife of the real estate mogul, whom she married in 2005, succeeding Ivana Trump (former model, married in 1977 and mother of Ivanka), then Marla Maples (married in the 1990s). For the record, she would have started by pushing Donald Trump away when they first met and refused to give him his phone number. She was then 28 and he was 52.
Eight years later, she married the billionaire in Palm Beach, Florida, in a Dior dress designed by John Galliano, a true masterpiece that required nearly 1,000 hours of work and the installation of 1,500 crystal rhinestones and cost over $ 200,000. Hard to believe today: The Clinton couple, Bill and Hillary, were present at the wedding ... Melania and Donald had a son, Barron Willams, 10, the fourth son of the Trump clan, to whose education she is dedicated. The "first lady" decided not to move in with her husband to the White House to stay with her son in New York
4. unpopularity
She is also the first "first lady" from the United States to have posed nude, during her modeling, in front of the French photographer of Bordeaux origin Alé de Basseville, before her meeting with Trump. She was then 25 years old.
The Future First Lady? See Melania Trump’s Naked Photo Shoot. https://t.co/tDcLqFAo9N pic.twitter.com/ZOA4qvsNTT
— GQ Australia (@GQAustralia) November 7, 2016
But it would be wrong to summarize Melania Trump in her past as a model. Full of ambition, she is far from being just a beauty queen: she speaks five languages, Slovene, French, Italian, German and English. A businesswoman, she created a jewelry brand (Melania Timepieces & Jewelry) and a cosmetics brand (Melania Caviar Complexe C6), and also participates in charitable works. She is notably a goodwill ambassador for the Red Cross.
In terms of popularity, however, Melania Trump remains far behind Michelle Obama, whom she succeeds as first lady. In early August, a "Washington Post" -ABC News poll indicated that she was the least popular candidate wives since ... Hilary Clinton. The most popular being Barbara Bush, wife of George W. and Michelle Obama. The ideal of Melania would be to be a “very traditional” first lady, “like Betty Ford or Jackie Kennedy”, if one refers to the confidences made in 1999 to the American media, when her husband was already dreaming of presenting himself. in the presidential election.
5.Plagiarism
With great discretion until Donald Trump won the presidential election, she stayed away from her husband's campaign. When she puts herself forward, it doesn't always work for her.
A few months ago, in July 2016, during a speech in Cleveland, Melania Trump was accused of plagiarizing a speech by Michelle Obama, thus making the Internet users laugh and the American press cabbage.
Another small accommodation with the truth, contrary to what is mentioned on her site, she does not have a degree in architecture and design, as revealed by two Slovenian journalists, Bojan Bozar and Igor Omerza, authors of the biography "Melania Trump - The Inside story: From a slovenian communist village to the White House ”.
6.Twitter
The new "first lady" will she be as addicted as her husband to social networks? We can doubt it. In a CNN interview where she was asked what she would like her husband to change, she bluntly replied, "Twitter" ...
Anyway, the account of First Lady Michelle Obama (@FLOTUS) now becomes that of Melania Trump, as does the account @POTUS (acronym for "President of the United States"), launched a year ago. little more than a year by Barack Obama, is placed at the disposal of the 45th President of the United States. The presidential account retains its 11 million subscribers but the "timeline" (message flow) is reset.
