Is it or isn’t it?
On Tuesday, a listing surfaced on eBay purportedly providing Melania Trump’s wedding ceremony gown on the market. You understand, the one designed by John Galliano for Dior couture, reportedly costing greater than $100,000, worn by the primary woman at her Mar-a-Lago wedding ceremony to Donald J. Trump and featured on her solely Vogue cover, in February 2005.
The gown, priced at $45,000 by a lady who identifies herself as Svjabc1 and is in Massapequa, N.Y., is described as being “made from duchesse satin” with “a figure-hugging silhouette, a 90-meter voluminous skirt and embroidered with 1,500 Swarovski diamonds.” Based on the itemizing, the vendor purchased the gown from Mrs. Trump for her personal wedding ceremony in 2010 for $70,000. It doesn’t include any proof of authenticity, apart from 21 pictures highlighting its billowing practice and diamanté embroidery, that are juxtaposed in opposition to the well-known Vogue cowl, presumably to indicate the similarity.
The journal story, which described the soon-to-be Mrs. Trump’s seek for her robe through the couture reveals, additionally contained many particulars concerning the gown that made information on the time and have resurfaced with the sale, together with the truth that it weighed 60 kilos and took 550 hours to finish.
Nearly instantly the information was embraced by quite a few shops, proclaiming, “You Can Purchase Melania Trump’s Wedding ceremony Gown” (The Spectator) and “How A lot Would You Pay for Melania Trump’s Wedding ceremony Gown?” (The Cut). As of Wednesday morning, the itemizing was being “watched” by 224 folks.
Leaving apart the truth that the vendor acknowledges on the itemizing that she made “a number of modifications” to the robe — extra satin, extra embroidery and straps — which suggests it not seems equivalent to Mrs. Trump’s robe, there’s one other downside. The designer Hervé Pierre, Mrs. Trump’s longtime stylist (he made her inauguration robes in 2017 and 2025), mentioned of her wedding ceremony gown, “I saved the robe myself in Palm Seaside.”
After which added, “Two years in the past.”
Neither the primary woman’s workplace nor the vendor responded to a number of requests for remark. Dior likewise declined to touch upon the gown, noting that it was a coverage to not focus on interactions with couture purchasers. A spokesman identified, nonetheless, {that a} couture robe at all times comes with a label and a quantity. To authenticate it, he mentioned, they would want to see the gown in individual.
Mr. Pierre mentioned that the marriage gown he saved in Florida for Mrs. Trump had a label on the aspect in addition to a ribbon with a reference quantity. Within the a number of close-ups of the robe on the market on eBay, none reveals a label.
Alexis Hoopes, the vice chairman for trend at eBay, mentioned the corporate was based on belief and referred to its widespread Authenticity Assure coverage, which covers watches, purses, jewellery, streetwear, sneakers and buying and selling playing cards, although she acknowledged that the assure program didn’t lengthen to “the merchandise in query.”
Nonetheless, the choice to make use of eBay to promote a historic garment, albeit one which has been altered, is a peculiar one, mentioned Cameron Silver, the proprietor of the Los Angeles classic boutique A long time.
“I might at all times recommend an public sale home for historic clothes with provenance,” he mentioned. Firms like Christie’s have auctioned garments from figures like Audrey Hepburn, whereas Julien’s in London offered Princess Diana’s gowns, and Kerry Taylor Auctions dealt with the garments of Elizabeth Taylor, Leslie Caron and Jerry Corridor.
The itemizing first got here to consideration by Liana Satenstein’s Substack, Neverworns. Ms. Satenstein mentioned she grew to become conscious of it by a buddy, Patricia Torvalds, who was in search of a classic wedding ceremony gown and had been corresponding with the vendor. Based on Ms. Torvalds, the vendor, who has been on eBay since November 2021, has moved 119 objects and has a optimistic suggestions score of 98.8 %, mentioned she had sourced the gown by one other buddy, who claimed to know Mrs. Trump.
Based on eBay messages between the 2 ladies that had been seen by The New York Instances, the vendor mentioned the label was taken out when the gown was altered by the seamstress and by no means changed. (She additionally has a lot of different objects listed on eBay, together with a diamond wedding band made as a reproduction of the one Mrs. Trump wore on her wedding ceremony day.) She mentioned that she was getting a variety of messages from folks curious concerning the robe and its origins. Nonetheless, the itemizing continues to be up.
The place the gown may very well have come from is unclear. Typically, when a well known determine will get married in a public manner and the robe is featured in {a magazine} like Vogue, it is going to be copied by any variety of bridal designers and provided on the market. The unique gown was impressed by a glance from Mr. Galliano’s “Empress Sissi” Dior couture assortment in February 2004, so it’s potential {that a} pattern was offered.
In any case, the willingness of many individuals to simply accept the concept that the gown might have belonged to Mrs. Trump and that she was keen to promote her wedding ceremony robe — a garment it’s typically accepted most individuals preserve without end — is a mirrored image of the difficult emotions folks have concerning the Trumps, their relationship and the precedents they’ve set in monetizing their lives.
Certainly, Mrs. Trump herself sells jewelry, ornaments and her personal memecoin by way of her web site. In 2022, in a break with first woman precedent, she auctioned off one other historic piece of clothing from her wardrobe fairly than donating it to the Nationwide Archive: the white hat she wore in 2018 through the first Trump administration on the event of the French state go to.
After all, on the time of that sale, the primary woman made positive to signal the hat simply in case there was any doubt the place it had come from.
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