by Kate Bennett
A popular expression in Slovenia is “tihi vodi premikajo gore,” an idiomatic expression that means “still waters run deep” and literally translates to “silent waters can move mountains.” If Melania’s quiet stoicism is read by emotionally expressive Americans as some sort of silent protest of sadness and despair, they’re wrong. Like most native Slovenians, she’s quietly judging you, or plotting her next move.
As her high school years came to an end, Melania had zero desire to move back to Sevnica. She enrolled in classes at the University of Ljubljana, studying architecture and design. But she held tight to modeling as a means to leave her home country and see the rest of the world. Jerko said most of his more successful girls naturally went next to Milan, where they could find more runway work or be paid as a fit model for design houses, meaning you were basically a breathing clothes hanger, meant to stand for hours at a time while a designer or an assistant had you try on outfit after outfit. “If you want to work in Milan, you have to be very good; you cannot be a beginner,” Jerko warned her.
So Melania participated in Ljubljana’s biggest modeling competition, the Jana magazine Model of the Year contest. She was already twenty-two years old at this point, well past the ripe age of modeling contests in America and other parts of the globe, ancient by the standards of the international Ford Models Supermodel of the World contest, probably the most popular and lucrative modeling competition in those days. Still, Melania placed second, behind her lookalike and fellow Jerko ingenue, Martina Kajfez. (Kajfez would go on to have a tepid modeling career for many years, mostly in Italy, before returning to her home country, where, now in her midforties, she resides in one of Slovenia’s picturesque coastal towns.) The contest was enough of a boon to her ego and her ambition that Melania dropped out of university after just shy of two years, getting Viktor and Amalija’s reluctant blessing to pack up and move to Milan. Ines came along, hoping to break into fashion from the design side.
Melania’s headshot from the time makes her look a bit like eighties rock groupie Tawny Kitaen. Her hair is dark and tousled, untamed and messy with bangs put to the side. Her cheekbones are sharp, her eyebrows have been plucked (a little) since her earlier photos, and she’s mastered the model mouth—lips slightly pursed and parted, just a hint of teeth showing, not a smile but also not a frown.
“I felt it was kind of too small for me,” said Melania of her decision to leave Slovenia for Italy and then Paris and, ultimately, New York. Nothing was holding young Melania back. She was eerily confident and, weirdly, having come from a town with about six stop signs in it, street-smart. “I always felt like, don’t lose the momentum with what you want to do,” she said of her decision to take her second-place win in a modeling contest and move to one of fashion’s most competitive markets. “Go for it. You don’t want to turn back and say, Oh, why didn’t I do that?” Melania lacked something most small-town girls have: fear. This attribute would serve her well for life with Trump.
5
The Donald
“I had my life. I didn’t care about his. I wasn’t starstruck.”
—MELANIA TRUMP
When Melania arrives in New York City in 1996, she’s on the wrong side of twenty-two—or sixteen, for that matter. At twenty-six, she’s already ten years older than most serious models begin their careers in fashion’s competitive market. She also has a new last name: Knauss, the Germanized version of her last name that she felt would be easier for potential employers to pronounce.
Though moving to Manhattan to work as a model was her ultimate goal, her arrival at such a late stage in her career felt like getting to the party just as the other guests were leaving. She could still probably get a drink at the bar and meet a few people, but the band had already stopped playing and the lights were coming up.
* * *
Today it’s the Stephen Sondheim Theatre, a standard show space on 43rd Street between 6th and Broadway. It’s environmentally sound, the first LEED-certified Broadway theater of its kind, renovated in 2009 with sustainable materials. Ironically, its longest-running hit was “Urinetown: The Musical.”
But in 1998, it was the Kit Kat Club, inspired by the divey Berlin nightspot from Cabaret. The Kit Kat was that raucous kind of dance club where DJs yelled over the music and waitresses passed out horns and noisemakers. It was heavy on strobe lights, and pretty girls in Hervé Léger bandage dresses got in gratis. The ubiquitous nightlife gag of champagne bottles with giant sparklers shooting out of the top was practically invented in clubs like the Kit Kat.
It was a draw for city dwellers as well as the bridge and tunnel crowd, and when night met the daylight at closing, it was often the scene of drunken brawls and police activity. The club’s neighbors had for years tried to get the place’s liquor license revoked in the hopes of shutting it down. By the time the Kit Kat fizzled out in 2000, not long after a young Shawn Carter, aka Jay-Z, was arrested there for stabbing a record company promoter, the owners of the building were frankly more than comfortable ushering it into its next phase of existence as a theater. But in 1998, it was bumpin’.
Fresh off his second marriage to Marla Maples, from whom he was separated for about a year but not yet divorced, Donald Trump was something of a New York nightclub regular. He was heavy into the dating scene at the time, picking up models, generally enjoying bachelorhood freedom after two back-to-back marriages. He was out, a lot, and almost always with young, pretty girls, many of whom he felt comfortable enough with to hug or kiss or pat on the behind, whether he was given the green light to do so or not. One of the people he was seen with during this period (at his estate, Mar-a-Lago, and in New York City) was Jeffrey Epstein, who would later be charged by federal prosecutors with sex trafficking and sexually abusing minors; Epstein killed himself in his jail cell while awaiting trial.
For a time, almost two years, one of Trump’s main squeezes was Kara Young, a model whom Trump met at a party in the Hamptons. Young was well known enough in modeling circles that the romance with the mogul made a few headlines, notably when Trump first started dating her, since she was still involved with a celebrity reporter named A. J. Benza. Trump, not one to be discreet about landing a beautiful woman, crowed about it to Howard Stern during one of their infamous radio interviews: “I stole his girlfriend. I took her away like he was a dog.”
On this particular evening at the Kit Kat, Trump was not with Young, but squiring another one of his regulars, a pretty blond Norwegian heiress (somewhat unfortunately) named Celina Midelfart. Midelfart, who looks like Trump’s daughter Ivanka, had also become something of a steady. Now in a relationship with a wealthy Norwegian businessman, she has since denied that she and Trump, twenty-eight and fifty-two years old at the time, were ever romantically involved, but they were spotted with regularity for several months in 1998, going to ritzy social events with names like the Million Dollar Beauty Ball at the Waldorf-Astoria, watching polo matches at the Bridgehampton Polo Club, and attending the hot nineties ticket VH1 Divas concert. They even went together to a birthday party for Donald’s first wife, Ivana Trump, at another nightclub popular at the time, Chaos, where Midelfart posed with her boyfriend’s then seventeen-year-old daughter Ivanka, Donald wedged in between, his arms tightly hugging both blondes. That setup, by the way, is one of Donald Trump’s favorite photo ops—whatever woman he is with on one side, his own daughter on the other, gripping both around their waists with equal intensity. It’s a pose Melania would soon come to know well.
Trump and Midelfart arrived at the Kit Kat for a party thrown by Paolo Zampolli, an Italian social fixture who at twenty-eight had already founded his own modeling agency, called ID Model Management. Not necessarily the loud-dance-club type, Trump preferred a private party, for which the Kit Kat would sometimes be a venue, for a substantial rental fee. It was September, New York Fashion Week, peak opportunity for red carpets crawling with models and the men who wanted to date them. If there were a club of rich dudes who took it upon themselves to g
o out every night and scope out beautiful young women, Donald Trump would be its president. He once said of dating, “The hunt is a great thing. We all love the hunt.”
Zampolli met Trump several months before that evening and considered him a good friend. The two would later collaborate on several real estate deals when Zampolli transitioned from modeling agent to real estate broker. His big claim to fame was melding the two, using models turned real estate agents as lures for big clients. Zampolli founded a second agency in 2006 called Paramount Realty, where his agents (who looked and dressed like high-fashion models, and oftentimes were) toured properties with clients in a company Rolls-Royce, having lunch with them as part of the agreement. Zampolli crowed about his idea and the basis of its success, “Everyone wants to know a model.”
But in the 1990s Zampolli collected for his agency the sort of model that probably wasn’t going to reach icon status, or even status status. Still, he cared for his girls and was known more as a social impresario than working agent. Zampolli claims he discovered Melania in Milan in 1996, where she was already doing the model grunt work of bouncing between there, Paris, London, and Berlin for gigs, making a passable living, but with her eyes on the prize of New York City. He takes credit for getting her there.
“She wanted to go to New York—that’s what she wanted,” says Zampolli, a colorful character who, since the late 1990s, has had several careers and is now the United Nations ambassador to the island of Dominica. Zampolli confides that he still maintains regular contact with Melania and the president, visiting with them at Mar-a-Lago, often posting photos afterward on his Instagram account. “Three months later, she came. She was very determined.” Zampolli has an Italian accent on the ridiculous side of thick and in several interviews, including mine, has praised Melania’s commitment to finding work and tenaciousness in making it. He’s quick to paint her as clean—no parties, no drugs, no booze. “She was someone who had serious dreams to work,” he tells me, “just come to New York to actually do her job. She was not going out.” Any model over the age of twenty-five still hoping to get work in New York probably also knew that late nights, smoking, and drinking weren’t going to do much to help with a nubile glow. Plus, the fashionable look at the time was, quite frankly, the opposite of Melania’s. Magazines and designers were hot for superskinny models; grunge was still lingering, and “heroin chic” was the rage. Kate Moss and Amber Valletta graced the cover of Vogue’s fabled September issue that year, all collarbones and elbows, ethereal slip dresses, pale blond locks, and gaunt faces. Melania at the time was raven-haired, busty, with full eyebrows, when the rest of the girls were having theirs shaved off and penciled back in. That she was the antithesis of what was “hot” at the moment in fashion likely kept her from getting as many jobs as the waifs from bigger modeling agencies. And, being Melania, she didn’t want to turn herself into something she was not by dropping twenty pounds and cutting her dark locks into a pixie. She would rather take her chances getting jobs looking like she looked—a noble game plan, but not exactly one that brought in a large number of gigs.
Still, Zampolli set her up with a roommate, a photographer named Matthew Atanian, in an apartment at Zeckendorf Towers, an eyesore of a massive red brick condo complex in Union Square. Rent was taken out of her contract with the agency, a common practice that helps push models to go on go-sees and find work. There was no sugarcoating it: her first home in the Big Apple was decidedly déclassé. But it had a pool and a gym, and Melania used both on a daily basis. For about two years, Atanian rented Melania that spare room in his apartment. He recalls her as simple, bookish, and a bit shy. After Melania became first lady, Atanian did an interview in which he said her favorite thing to do in the evenings was put on a bathrobe, sit on the couch, and watch Friends. Not the worst way to spend an evening, but not exactly getting the most out of the city that doesn’t sleep.
Her old roommate from her Paris modeling days, Victoria Silvstedt, who went on to be Playboy Playmate of the Year in 2007, has also said Melania was a homebody. “She was always very quiet,” said Silvstedt, who said the two wouldn’t even allow themselves the guilty pleasure of an infrequent fancy French dinner. “We would run up and down the stairs of our building to work it off.”
Atanian described Melania’s modeling talent as lacking, saying she was oftentimes stiff, and because of that work was not abundant. Since she was on the older side, Zampolli argues, Melania had success with ad campaigns for things like booze and cigarettes—one of Melania’s biggest gets was a billboard downtown for Camels. In the ad she’s holding a martini in one hand, a lit cigarette in the other, resting her chin on her hand. She’s heavily made up, and looks quite beautiful and glamorous, but the mood of the photo indicates she’s bored with you—and would prefer to just sit here and have a cocktail and a smoke. Not that there’s anything wrong with these kinds of advertising gigs. In fact, she was probably paid quite well; catalog work can be lucrative, too. Clearly, she wasn’t in the high-fashion ateliers and on the sets of overproduced magazine spreads, but she was not, according to those who were familiar with her jobs, a starving model.
Zampolli has repeatedly boasted not about Melania’s modeling prowess but about how well she took care of herself “like models should be doing.” She ate very little—no junk food—and relied mostly on fruits and vegetables as diet staples. Melania’s social life consisted of the rare night out—for example, when Zampolli would invite her to a private event such as the one at the Kit Kat or when she would catch a movie with Zampolli’s girlfriend at the time, because, “you know, that’s what girls do.” She wasn’t much of a dater, and there is no evidence she had a serious boyfriend during the time she was in New York. “It was known that I was very tough,” Melania said about that time in her life. “Yes, dating, but not dating. Maybe a movie or dinner. I was busy. After a long day, the last thing I wanted to do is get ready and go out at ten at night and then be up again at six in the morning. I don’t want to feel exhausted.” Again, shout-out to Friends episodes and terrycloth robes.
For Zampolli, being a modeling agent, especially back then, was more about what sort of access the job could supply, an angle he worked until it was coveted by others seeking the same currency. He became a “fixture,” which wasn’t necessarily a bad word in the New York club world. A fixture who could also get pretty young models to come to a party made for a pretty sweet occupation, one Zampolli navigated well.
Though ID Models folded in 2008, the Web site still exists, and on it is a tab that links to the “Friends” section, featuring a handful of pictures of Zampolli with semifamous fashion industry people. And Bill Clinton. But Zampolli threw decent parties and knew how to get Page Six regulars like Donald Trump in the door. Years later, at Trump’s inauguration, it would naturally be Zampolli who threw the afterparty. Complaining that Washington shut down as a city long before New York and that there would be lots of Manhattanites in D.C. for Trump’s festivities, eager to stay up past midnight, Zampolli took over a downtown nightclub called the Living Room and staked claim to the only inaugural party that wasn’t a ball and wasn’t over by 10 P.M.
But back to that fateful night at the Kit Kat … Trump may have arrived with Midelfart, but that didn’t mean he felt the need to show her any loyalty. It is a quality he requires others to demonstrate, but not one he practices himself. Case in point: Midelfart, who was already all but dumped that night, whether or not she knew it.
Trump noticed a dark-haired, blue-eyed woman sitting on a couch. He looked at her more than once and looked again. She looked back. “I went crazy,” Trump said about seeing Melania for the first time. “I was actually supposed to meet somebody else. There was this great supermodel sitting next to Melania,” Trump explained with his usual loose regard for superlatives. “I was supposed to meet this supermodel,” saying it enough times in front of Melania that you start to think maybe he’s enjoying comparing the woman he actually fell for to a hotter, more successful, and mo
re appropriate-for-him version. But, nah—the great supermodel didn’t catch his attention the way the Slovenian did. “I said, ‘Forget about her, who’s the one on the left’—and that was Melania.”
It’s become a familiar tale, so frequently do both Trump and Melania recount the icky-meets-cute details of their first meeting. Let us not forget, at the time Donald Trump was fifty-two years old, Melania Knauss, twenty-eight. She’d had two years in New York to scope out how it operated by the time she met Trump, and she was savvy about the parties that brought older men into the same orbit as pretty young women.
Trump waited for his opportunity. When Midelfart went to the ladies’ room, which at a party with five hundred people he knew could take a while, Trump pounced, approaching Melania and talking her up. She claims she knew who he was, but that she was not impressed.
“He asked for my number, but I didn’t give it to him. I asked for his number instead,” Melania would recall in several interviews throughout the decades that followed. She was proud of herself for the bold move, or at least proud of this story, because she figured if he really wanted her to call him, Trump would give her his real number, not that of a secretary. In the phone number, what he wanted from her would be revealed, she thought. If he isn’t serious, she’d know right away. Trump gave her four numbers: his direct line at work, his direct line at home, the number for his private jet, and the number to reach him at Mar-a-Lago. Another telling of this story claims that the reason Melania did not give him her number was that she was repulsed that he would hit on another woman while already on a date. Whether it was independence or moral high ground, the phone number thing was her choice, a reasoning she often uses to this day to justify her decision-making process. As long as she establishes the choice was hers—everything, at least in her mind, is okay.