One of the talking points we hear most about Melania Trump is that she was a “supermodel” when she met and eventually married Donald Trump.
In fact, the first lady reportedly received the coveted EB-1 visa, or the “Einstein” visa for “extraordinary ability.” Perhaps being a world-renowned model would grant her that status, but was she a supermodel?
In 2016 when nude photos of Melania were released (purportedly under Trump’s direction by Roger Stone [1]), Trump said, “Melania was one of the most successful supermodels and she did many photo shoots, including covers and major magazines.”
One of the most successful supermodels??
When I think of a supermodel, I think of Cindy Crawford, Naomi Campbell, Christy Turlington…not Melania Knauss.
Melania studied design at the University of Ljubljana, before abandoning it for modeling. In 1995 she was spotted in Milan by a model scout who also happened to be a friend of Trump’s. She moved to New York, sharing an apartment with a photographer named Matthew Atanian.
Atanian described her to Vanity Fair [2] as disciplined in her pursuit of her career – although hardly to a degree that was extreme by the standards of 1990s models. “She wore ankle weights around the apartment” and strictly ate “five to seven vegetables and fruits every day”.
Her modeling career was floundering – due to “stiffness,” Atanian said – when she met Trump, in 1998.
Their partnership seems to have given them both what they most wanted. She got, says Vanity Fair, “a luxurious home where she could indulge her hobbies – Pilates and reading fashion magazines . . . and a promise that she would never have to return to drab Eastern-European prospects”.
After being known on Trump’s side, Melania infamously posed nude (with strategic covering) for British GQ’s [3]“Sex at 30,000 feet: Melania Knauss earns her air miles” cover story in the January 2000 issue.
“She’s popular, she’s brilliant, she’s a wonderful woman,” Trump told the magazine.
If you look for modeling photos of Melania, most of the shots are similar to these:
I mean, those aren’t high-fashion shots.
I wonder, was Cindy Crawford worried about this:
Writer Quinn Cummings pointed out on Twitter that Melania has no professional photos and no ZED card, which every model has, let alone a SUPERMODEL.
I keep thinking about Melania's zed card.
If you aren't near the modeling business, a zed card or a comp card is the modeling equivalent of a headshot. It's slightly different, because their stats will be on it and headshots are mostly of the actor's, well, head.
— Quinn Cummings (@quinncy) March 3, 2019 [4]
A zed card will have at least one full-body shot. Back before the Internet, this was the only way models could be submitted for work. As the assistant to a casting director back then, I saw thousands of these. It was both my work and a fun way to assure I always felt fat.
— Quinn Cummings (@quinncy) March 3, 2019 [5]
Here are some examples. Joan's is recent, Behati's is probably from an earlier time, before the rock star husband and the kids. pic.twitter.com/qhEDmUQmCB [6]
— Quinn Cummings (@quinncy) March 3, 2019 [7]
Which is why her zed cards keep bugging me.
We have never seen one.
Models are constantly refreshing and updating their book as they get work. The better pictures become a new zed card. You are being hired because of your looks.
— Quinn Cummings (@quinncy) March 3, 2019 [8]
The visuals which sell you have to be their best, so you and your booker are always trying to improve it. There are always previous cards left over. We have never seen a single zed card for any of the years she was supposed to be working surface.
— Quinn Cummings (@quinncy) March 3, 2019 [9]
Also, no professional shoots of any kind. We have tons of early pictures of any model of her generation, even if you were only a second-tier catalogue model.
(No insult meant to catalogue. That stuff is BANK)
Again, if your life is your image, you keep careful track of it.
— Quinn Cummings (@quinncy) March 3, 2019 [10]
This is what you find of Melania. There are more, but you get the point. These are the pictures your local photographer takes in your podunk Communist town which you send to a modeling agency, who never writes back. pic.twitter.com/cp2Kxkyq0j [11]
— Quinn Cummings (@quinncy) March 3, 2019 [12]
Okay, just one more. pic.twitter.com/0iFK7LdTAL [13]
— Quinn Cummings (@quinncy) March 3, 2019 [14]
The next time she's working, it's because she's dating some old guy in New York and she's sort of famous. There are literally no pictures of her work.
"But what about the nude ones with the girl?"
Yeah, that's not modeling the way she tries to present herself.
— Quinn Cummings (@quinncy) March 3, 2019 [15]
Which brings me to my point, which I am going to present very, very delicately.
There's a decade she can't account for.
There's are nude pictures featuring implants which, besides being shoddy work, make her too big for top-level fashion modeling.
— Quinn Cummings (@quinncy) March 3, 2019 [16]