Melania Trump believes the human body—specifically her own—is a work of art.
On Wednesday, she posted a short video that begins, “Why do I stand proudly behind my nude modeling work?” to her social media accounts, explaining over a montage of images featuring Michelangelo’s David and John Collier’s Lady Godiva that “the more pressing question is, why has the media chosen to scrutinize the celebration of the human form in a fashion photo shoot?”
The video is in the same style as other clips she’s posted as promotion ahead of the October 8 publication of her coffee-table book cum memoir, Melania, so it’s possibly a piece of promotion. She doesn’t show any of her own body of body-centric work, and doesn’t actually answer the question she poses at the outset of the video. Perhaps she’s still wondering too. Another unsolved mystery: Who is she defending herself against?
Photographer Antoine Verglas also stands proudly behind the work. In an interview with Vanity Fair, Verglas estimated he worked with Melania Trump once or twice a year from around 1998 to 2005, the year she married Donald Trump.
“I think Melania, the way she’s launching her book, talking about it and celebrating the human body and the beauty of human nature—I think she’s right,” Verglas told VF. “Why not celebrate? We talk about the inclusiveness of all type of beauty. She’s proud of her body and the body she had, at that time, and I think she’s right.”
Verglas had “a working relationship” with Melania, who he described as “pretty reserved and pretty shy,” and interacted with Donald “a few times sporadically, absolutely not frequently,” and noted that Trump never appeared on one of his shoots.
Verglas, who is known for his sensual images, also captured Carla Bruni in the nude. He was the photographer for then Melania Knauss’s now infamous 2000 British GQ cover shoot (the title is owned by Condé Nast, which also publishes Vanity Fair), for which she posed naked on a sheepskin rug on Trump’s jet, handcuffed to a suitcase. The magazine’s cover lines promise “Sex at 30,000 ft” and bill the issue as a “Naked supermodel special!” Reached by phone this week, Verglas said that he “did lots of shoots through the years” with Melania, including for the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition in 2000. After she and Trump married, Melania pulled back from modeling to raise her son, Barron Trump.
“I’m glad these images are resurfacing like this, and I’m happy that she’s embracing them, and that her and her husband like them, and it makes me happy that I did not do such a bad job in the end,” he said of the GQ spread. “I see that she’s celebrating her beauty and her body, those images and others.”
He says that he reconceptualized a Bond Girl theme around Melania. Verglas didn’t need to do much staging, as the aircraft already had 18-karat-gold-plated seatbelt buckles.
The photos “display Melania in a way that she maybe was not seen everywhere else,” he said. “There [were] about six, seven outfits…but it was definitely on the sexy side and the sensual side and the feminine side and—I would say Eastern European, at the time—factor, which [defined] a James Bond girl. So I thought she was perfect. It was perfect casting to do that type of story with her.”
Other photos in Melania’s portfolio, like a girl-on-girl themed spread for a 1997 issue of France’s Max magazine, where she appeared topless in one photo and preparing to be whipped in another, also drew attention during Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
Dylan Jones, who was editor of British GQ at the time and now edits the London Evening Standard, wrote about the photos in a 2023 column. “It sounds tacky now but was intended as a tongue-cheek takedown of corporate debauchery,” he said. “Not that Trump understood that, of course; he was simply pleased to have his girlfriend photographed in his own plane in a fancy magazine.”
“He loved the pictures when he eventually saw them and called the office personally to congratulate us,” Jones continued. “This was nothing less than surreal, especially as the irony of the exercise appeared to have escaped him. He was charming, though, if slightly unhinged. We even framed some of the pictures and couriered them over to his apartment in New York. For me the whole project was a successful prank, highlighting the ludicrous nature of celebrity culture in the Noughties.”
“It’s true,” Verglas said of Donald Trump’s delight over the photos. “I think he was very much in love with Melania, and I think it was very reciprocal at the time,” he said. “And I think he was infatuated by her beauty, and her stature, and elegance, and he was proud of these pictures. When I worked with her for Sports Illustrated, I think he was happy that she was doing well and being a celebrated top model at the time.”
“They were very happy,” he said. “I was very happy too.”
Verglas said he’d been contacted by Melania’s publisher, Skyhorse, to send photos from the British GQ shoot, Sports Illustrated, and others to feature in the upcoming book, but that he hasn’t seen an advance copy, nor does he know if any of his photos made the final cut. (Donald has admitted that he hasn’t read his wife’s book and doesn’t know what’s in there. “I don’t know, I didn’t, so busy,” he flubbed at a recent event, and “if she says bad things about me, I’ll call you all up and I’ll say, ‘Don’t buy it. Get rid of it.’”)
Though Verglas declined to specify which candidate he will vote for in the 2024 election, he sang Melania’s praises as a fashionable first lady for the ages.
“I think in terms of icons of fashion and beauty you had Jackie O, and now you have Melania,” he said. “Melania, despite what everybody can say, when you saw her at certain events, she exudes elegance and beauty, and she’s tall, and she has amazing figure, and she was always dressed impeccably at events.”
Skyhorse Publishing, Donald Trump’s campaign, and Dylan Jones’s publisher did not respond to Vanity Fair’s requests for comment.
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