These days, Ivanka Trump – like the rest of her family – is a global hate figure, often referred to during the early days of the Trump presidency as the unofficial First Lady of the United States (given The Donald’s wife Melania’s apparent reluctance to fully engage in the political world beyond occasionally undermining her husband) and – if the stories in Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury are to believed – harbours ambitions to be President herself, following the American Presidential tradition of anyone being able to be President – as long as they are very rich and ideally the spouse, offspring or sibling of a former President. We should not demonise people because of the actions of their family members – but Ivanka was so immersed in Donald Trump’s administration and such an apologist for his actions that she can hardly claim to be an innocent bystander. Her rise to right-wing political power was quite the swerve for someone who had previously shown very little interest in anything beyond fame for fame’s sake and whose performative socio-political activities were very much in the woolly liberal direction.
Back in 1997, she was just a spoiled rich teenager with a famous surname who did what so many spoiled teenage girls with celebrity parents and no real talent for anything other than being able to stand upright and walk in a straight line (and sometimes not even that) have done before and since, and became a model. Modelling agencies, after all, just love to snap up the idle offspring of the rich and famous, knowing that they bring with them instant publicity and a curious level of kudos among both the celebrity-obsessed masses and the sort of celebrity-obsessed fashion victims who believe that unearned wealth is somehow admirable.
In her modelling years, Ivanka Trump walked the catwalk for Paco Rabanne, Versace, Marc Bouwer and Vivienne Westwood – all of whom were then quite happy to cash in on the Trump name, despite his less-than-stellar reputation as a businessman amongst anyone who bothered to do the slightest bit of research. Similarly, Vogue – in its pre-Woke years – was all too happy to feature a model who most agencies had turned down as being not up to the job before she finally signed with Elite… a company owned by John Casablancas, a friend of Donald Trump’s who ran events at Trump Tower. Not that we are suggesting that is why the agency or Vogue saw the potential in Ivanka that others had failed to spot, of course. Even so, she was signed to Elite’s ‘celebrity’ department, where famous people who might not have been able to cut it as models in their own right but who came with pre-existing fame could be used as headline grabbers while having their egos stroked by the vapid inhabitants of a world where celebrity and money worship runs rampant – a win-win situation for all concerned.
Thierry Mugler, no stranger to using (in)famous names ranging from Diana Ross to Traci Lords (and that was just in one catwalk show), also had Ivanka Trump modelling his clothes on the catwalk, notoriously walking the catwalk smoking a cigarette, aged fourteen – something that might have raised eyebrows and possibly involved legal intervention in any other circumstance, but was depressingly routine in the fashion world. Of course, Mugler’s catwalk shows were increasingly less about the supermodels and more about shock tactics and the rich and (in)famous – as well as Lords, he used gay porn icon Jeff Stryker in his shows as a way of both causing a stir and reflecting the Nineties fetish, gay and subculture world that he was inspired by. There was, at least, a certain knowing irony in Mugler’s shows that others lacked – his use of notorious figures seemed more in line with John Waters‘ bad taste casting of people like Patty Hearst (Waters too was drawn to using Traci Lords in his work) than mere celeb worship. Ironically, Mugler would later sell his intellectual copyright and found himself unable to use his own name as a fashion designer.
In 1997, Ivanka Trump appeared alongside Brazilian model Renata Maciel dos Santos in a long-forgotten Mugler brochure. The photos are by Inez Van Lamsweerde and Vindooh Matadin and the brochure consists of 16 postcard-sized pages, with eight perforated images that can be separated for each model. Searching for references to this using Google’s reverse image search resulted in the suggestion that the cover shot was The Stepford Wives poster, which you might think is rather telling. The brochure was given away as a freebie in the French edition of Elle and presumably lost by everyone except my other half, a Mugler collector who had it buried away in a box of clippings that we recently unearthed.
Back when this was given away, Ivanka was still the cool rich kid whose dad was an eccentric celebrity billionaire, known as a celebrity in his own right – a cartoonishly amusing and ultimately harmless figure who would make guest appearances on WWE wrestling, fighting Vince McMahon, pop up as himself in movies and later became the face of The Apprentice. Back then, his megalomania all seemed a bit of an act. Who knew, eh? It’s hard to see these photos and realise that you are looking at someone who became Senior Advisor to the President of the United States within 20 years.
Ivanka Trump didn’t stick with modelling. For the most part, the pampered offspring of the rich and powerful rarely stick with any career for long, instead jumping from one vanity job that has been opened up by their wealth and name to another, never having any actual talent or qualifications beyond the ability to exploit their parents’ fame and connections. Ivanka followed the standard direction for these spoiled brats with a need for attention and validation – dabbling in fashion, ‘writing’ books (that were, in reality, ghost-written for her), making TV and film appearances and getting involved in vague charities. It’s rather surprising that she didn’t release a record or have her own reality show, but perhaps her father’s mad attention-seeking was too exhausting to compete with.
So far, she has said she won’t be involved in a second Trump administration, should that happen. But perhaps her mild distancing from her father – which began around the time of the January 6th riots – is a calculated move to allow a run for President herself in the future. It’s a numbing thought, but there is the possibility, however unlikely it might seem, that Ivanka Trump might be America’s first elected female President. God help us.
DAVID FLINT
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