A Look Back at Melania Trump's Modeling Career

Growing up in communist Yugoslavia, Melania Trump couldn’t have guessed she’d one day become one of the most powerful women in the world as Donald Trump’s wife. Born Melanija Knavs, the future First Lady lived a traditional Eastern European life (with a little more money than the average communist family) until she was “discovered” as a model by Slovenian fashion photographer Stane Jerko.

At just 16 years old, Melania started modeling, pursuing a love of fashion inherited from her mother, Amalija Knavs, who worked as a patternmaker. After graduating high school, Melania enrolled in the Faculty of Architecture and Civil and Geodetic Engineering at the University of Ljubljana but dropped out a few months later to pursue her modeling career. So what did that career entail?

Melania’s first time modeling was in a school-sponsored show at 16 years old, when Stane “discovered” her. After that, he encouraged her to continue modeling, despite her first love of designing fashion. In 1992, Melania was the runner-up for the Jane Magazine Look of the Year, securing an international modeling contract with RVR Reclame in Milan.

She left the agency a few months later but continued to tour Europe for modeling gigs, eventually settling in Paris in her early twenties. Melania modeled mostly for fashion houses in Milan and Paris, the world's fashion capitals, so it’s no surprise that her star power continued to rise.

In 1995, according to Vanity Fair, Melania met Paolo Zampolli, the co-owner of Metropolitan Models who would later encourage Melania to move to New York. He was also a mutual friend of Donald Trump. One of Melania’s earliest gigs from this era was a sexually explicit shoot in a 1997 issue of Max, a French men’s magazine that didn’t pay but promised “exposure in a high-profile magazine.”

But one of Melania’s first major gigs was for a Camel cigarette ad shot by Ellen von Unwerth as a Rolling Stone ad and Times Square billboard, as explained in Mary Jordan's biography, The Art of Her Deal: The Untold Story of Melania Trump. Since then, Melania appeared on the covers of several high-profile publications, such as Harper’s Bazaar in Bulgaria and Vanity Fairy in Italy. She also worked with famous photographers, like Patrick Demarchelier and Helmut Newton.

Then, in 2000, Melania did a controversial nude shoot for the cover of GQ. [“It’s] nothing more than you see every year in Sports Illustrated.” The issue promoted its “Naked Supermodel Special,” which also included Kate Moss, Amber Valletta, and more. While she continued modeling while dating Donald Trump, Melania eventually stepped away from her career to support her husband and son.

In fact, according to biographers Mary Jordan and Kate Bennett, who wrote Free, Melania, Melania was a driving force behind Trump’s 2016 campaign, paying close attention to the polls at home and encouraging him to follow his instincts. It’s rumored that Melania is one of the few people who truly has Trump’s ear. So despite Donald’s multiple alleged affairs and Melania’s former career as a model, she may be smarter than many of us initially thought.