The exquisitely elegant and fabulously fashionable Melania Trump has settled comfortably into her role as first lady in the White House over the last year and a half.
If it seems like the first lady carries herself with the attitude of someone who’s been there before, well, that is because she has — sort of. In 1993, Melania posed as the first female U.S. president for a Slovenian clothing line advertisement.
Take a look:
Fashionable foreshadowing
According to Harper’s Bazaar, the rather low-budget ad featured then-23-year-old model Melania Knavs disembarking an “Air Force One” airplane and signing important executive documents in an “Oval Office” while surrounded by advisers and “Secret Service” security.
She wore a then-fashionable trench coat with massive shoulder pads over a power suit with large sunglasses and a decidedly ’90s hairstyle.
The ad was filmed and produced several years prior to her emigrating to the U.S., where she met Donald Trump in 1998, and went on to become the first lady of the United States in real life.
Univision actually reported on the ad in 2016 and even spoke with the producers of the brief video, who described the ad as depicting “the first woman president of the United States on the day of her inauguration.”
Not what it seems
Since the ad was filmed in Slovenia and not the U.S., the steps of the “U.S. Capitol” building were actually the steps of the National University of Slovenia’s library, and the supposed “Air Force One” was actually a much smaller commercial passenger jet.
Furthermore, her “Oval Office” was adorned with the flags of Slovenia and the European Union instead of the United States’ familiar stars and stripes.
“It is the most extraordinary historical coincidence, she looked refined, elegant, really presidential,” Jožica Brodaric, who claimed to have written the script for the ad, said of Melania.
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The rediscovery of this ad from 25 years ago is quite extraordinary and rather coincidental.
Who would have guessed that a model who played a president in an ad would one day live in the White House for real?