She’s well into her second term as First Lady and still there’s no sign that she will receive one of the most prestigious accolades of the role – being featured on the cover of Vogue.
The storied title has bestowed this privilege on past Democrat First Ladies from Jackie Kennedy to Michelle Obama while Republicans Laura Bush and Nancy Reagan were each afforded an inside spread.
But Anna ‘Nuclear’ Wintour has so far snubbed Melania entirely and, insiders say, she has let it be known that she will only extend her an invitation under very particular circumstances.
According to one: ‘Something extraordinary would have to happen. If she was going to leave Donald – if there was a hint of divorce – Anna would be first in line for an interview.’
Yes, staunch Democrat Wintour may have sanctioned the infamous 2010 syrupy puff piece on Syrian dictator’s Bashar-al-Assad’s wife Asma – ‘The very freshest and most magnetic of first ladies’- but the Trump regime is a clearly a step too far.
It’s a stance which, the Daily Mail has learned, has earned the magazine house the moniker ‘Conde Nasty’ in Trump circles along with a cascade of cancelled subscriptions.
The publisher’s catty carping in the wake of Melania’s recent official White house portrait suggests that there has been little thawing in relations.
Dressed in a classic Dolce and Gabbana black pant suit, even this most innocuous style choice drew unflattering comparisons to ‘a freelance magician’ or a contestant on The Apprentice and was oddly branded ‘situationally inappropriate’.
Melania Trump (pictured at the Liberty Ball with Donald) is well into her second term as First Lady and still there’s no sign that she will receive one of the most prestigious accolades of the role – being featured on the cover of Vogue.
Anna ‘Nuclear’ Wintour (pictured) has so far snubbed Melania entirely and, insiders say, she has let it be known that she will only extend her an invitation under very particular circumstances.
The storied title has bestowed this privilege on past Democrat First Ladies from Jackie Kennedy to Michelle Obama (pictured with Anna Wintour) while Republicans Laura Bush and Nancy Reagan were each afforded an inside spread.
The publisher’s catty carping in the wake of Melania’s recent official White house portrait (pictured) suggests that there has been little thawing in relations.
Damning her with faint praise, writer Hannah Jackson conceded it was an improvement on the 54-year-old’s 2017 portrait which apparently saw Melania ‘airbrushed to oblivion.’
And make no mistake, according to one former Vogue executive this mean girl pettiness would have been approved by Wintour who reportedly scrutinizes every word in each edition.
It’s a little at odds with the magazine’s self-professed female empowerment focus.
‘I think it’s important for Vogue to support women who are leading change in this country,’ said Wintour, while failing to comment when asked by The Economist about the First Lady’s style during Trump’s 2019 UK state visit.
The subtext was clear; this mute clothes horse lacks the necessary substance for the weight of our pages. Unlike, presumably, the gravitas of its fawning 2021 piece with triple cover girl Jill Biden which elicited this kind of insight: ‘It’s not that often Joe and I get to have a whole morning together, just coffee, you know, talking.’
Who knows, perhaps if Wintour put her biases aside for a minute, the mysterious Melania with her notable pro-choice stance on abortion rights – revealed in her recent autobiography, Melania, – could have made an interesting interviewee.
But why bother when it’s easier to keep fangirling over Jill, Michelle and Kamala?
And perhaps her left leaning anti Trump bias owes something to the influence of her team.
She may be known for her ball-breaking leadership style but, insiders say, the 75-year-old is helming a workforce ever more in need of trigger warnings, with employees reportedly traumatized by Trump’s victory 2.0.
‘Conde Nast had been in such a liberal democratic bubble that they didn’t see it coming; the whole team were in shock in the US,’ says one
‘The younger team members at Conde Nast were in tears on the day of the election. There had to be special meetings and counselling arranged for them in the offices. It was really weird. Like come on guys, did you not see this coming?’
Of course it wasn’t always thus. Back when she was still Melania Knauss – the latest model on the arm of Trump when he was just a Manhattan mover and shaker – the Slovenian native was well in with the fashion elite.
She was mentored by Vogue’s very own editor-at-large, fashion legend Andre Leon Talley. By the time she and Trump married in January 2005 her dress, which reportedly cost between $100,000 and $200,000, was made by John Galliano for Dior.
The next month she was featured as a bride with a Vogue cover all her own and the inside headline, ‘How To Marry a Billionaire.’
Vogue’s 2021 fawning piece with triple cover girl Jill Biden elicited this kind of insight: ‘It’s not that often Joe and I get to have a whole morning together, just coffee, you know, talking.’ (Pictured: Jill Biden on the cover of Vogue in 2024).
Of course it wasn’t always thus. Back when she was still Melania Knauss – the latest model on the arm of Trump when he was just a Manhattan mover and shaker -the Slovenian native was well in with the fashion elite. (Melania, Donald and Anna are pictured in 2005).
By the time Melania and Trump married in January 2005 her dress. The next month she was featured as a bride with a Vogue cover all her own and the inside headline, ‘How To Marry a Billionaire.’
From there on the fashion world opened up to her. She sat in the front rows of Paris’s summer couture shows and was pictured around town with Manolo Blahnik.
In 2006 Vogue once again ran a spread featuring Melania, then pregnant with Barron, posing by the steps of Trump’s private jet.
How things have changed. Ever since she switched up to Air Force One Melania has felt the icy blasts of fashion Siberia, as the taste-making elite have decided that she, and any other Trump women, must be treated as pariahs and excluded from the inner sanctum.
Their judgment extends to anyone bold enough to dress the Whitehouse wife. The Daily Mail has been told that the magazine ‘takes a hugely dim view’ of any fashion house that commits this most serious offence.
Yes, fashion and politics are a fickle business.
Though the Trump women tend to have the last laugh. Plumping for uncancellable powerhouse (and prolific Vogue advertiser) Christian Dior, Ivanka Trump sheathed in a structured, elegant retro suit was easily the best dressed at the presidential inauguration.
Melania was a close second and, even if she is effectively left to shop off the rack like the rest of us mortals, both she and Ivanka possess such glamazon stature and proportions that they look fabulous regardless of their limited options.
For her part, Melania seems supremely unbothered, and perhaps we should allow her the last word as delivered to former advisor, Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, to whom she once declared, ‘I don’t give a f*** about Vogue.’
