In the latest mystery involving the ever elusive Melania Trump, people are finding it easy to believe claims that the first lady’s $100,000 designer wedding dress is for sale on eBay — at a discount price, starting at $45,000.
Those claims come from a Long Island woman, who listed a massive, elaborate, white satin wedding gown on the e-commerce site on Tuesday. The woman, going by the user name Svjabc1, claims that the dress she’s selling is the same strapless gown, designed by John Galliano for Dior couture, that the former model wore when she wed Donald Trump in January 2005 and for the cover of Vogue magazine the following month, the New York Times reported. Photos of the seller’s dress show that it, like Melania Trump’s reportedly 60-pound gown, has a voluminous skirt and glittery embroidery, said to feature more than 1,500 Swarovski crystals.
According to a Substack report by Vogue fashion writer Liana Satenstein, the seller said she purchased Melania Trump’s gown for her own wedding in 2011 for $70,000, gaining access to it via a friend, who was friends with Donald’s Trump’s wife. The seller acknowledged that she made some alterations to the dress, including by adding a new layer of satin at the bottom and straps to the bodice because her chest is larger than Melania’s. But since the seller’s wedding, the dress has sat in a box, “which I imagine, like the dress, is absolutely enormous,” Satenstein said.
But is the dress really Melania Trump’s wedding gown?
New York Times fashion writer Vanessa Friedman said the eBay dress does not come with any proof of authenticity, other than the 21 photos posted on the page, which are designed to show its similarity to Melania Trump’s dress. However, sources told both the New York Times and Women’s Wear Daily that the first lady’s dress should be stored away at Mar-a-Lago. The first lady’s stylist, designer Hervé Pierre, told the Times that he himself stored the gown two years ago.
Still, neither the eBay seller nor the first lady’s office responded to requests for comment from New York Times. Dior also declined to comment, though a spokesperson for the designer said that couture gowns always come with a label and a number.
This lack of proof of authenticity for the eBay gown has not stopped social media users and numerous outlets from seizing on the idea that Donald Trump’s wife would let her supposedly precious wedding dress wind up on eBay. “How Much Would You Pay for Melania Trump’s Wedding Dress?” asked a headline in The Cut.
If people find it easy to believe that Melania Trump off-loaded her wedding dress, that’s probably due to Americans’ “complicated feelings” about the Slovenian immigrant and the rest of the Trump family.
After all, the Trumps also are known for applying a transactional approach to personal, professional and even diplomatic relationships — with the president’s top officials recently caught in a leaked Signal group war chat, grousing about Europe paying its fair share to bomb Houthi militia forces in Yemen.
More specifically, the Trump family is known for monetizing their lives, Friedman and others have noted. While the former real estate mogul became a reality TV star on “The Apprentice,” Melania Trump had a side gig, selling jewelry and skin care on QVC.
In 2022, she began selling ornaments and limited-edition NFTs — including one made of a watercolor of her eyes — on her website, the New York Times reported at the time. This year, Trump’s White House has taken the unprecedented step of commercializing the annual Easter Egg Roll — an event usually presided over by the first lady — by soliciting corporate sponsors, as CNN reported.
Some may find it hard to fathom that Melania Trump could have so little regard for her wedding dress that she’d off-load to a friend of a friend. Women often regard their wedding dresses as among their most precious belongings, something they carefully store away, perhaps with the idea of passing it along to their own daughters.
Melania Trump’s wedding dress also could be considered “historic” — like famous garments worn by other first ladies or by dead celebrities like Princess Diana or Audrey Hepburn, according to Friedman. Such clothing items might be sold by top auction houses like Christies, sometimes to raise money for charity.
First ladies also have been known to donate memorable clothing, worn on historic occasions, to the National Archive, Friedman reported.
But Melania Trump has already broken with that tradition to cash in, according to Friedman. In 2022, she auctioned off an “iconic, broad-rimmed” white hat on her website. She wore the hat during a state visit to France during her husband’s first administration. The hat was one of three pieces, marketed as part of Melania Trump’s “Head of State Collection,” that she offered for sale, with bids starting at $250,000.