The Mystery of Melania Trump's Wedding Dress and an eBay Sale
On Tuesday, a listing surfaced on eBay purportedly offering Melania Trump's wedding dress for sale. You know, the one designed by John Galliano for Dior couture, reportedly costing more than $100,000, worn by the first lady at her Mar-a-Lago wedding to Donald Trump and featured on her only Vogue cover, in February 2005.
The dress, priced at $45,000 by a woman who identifies herself as Svjabc1 and is in Massapequa, N.Y., is described as being 'made of duchesse satin' with 'a figure-hugging silhouette, a 90-meter voluminous skirt and embroidered with 1,500 Swarovski diamonds.' According to the listing, the seller bought the dress from Mrs. Trump for her own wedding in 2010 for $70,000. It does not come with any proof of authenticity, other than 21 photos highlighting its billowing train and diamanté embroidery, which are juxtaposed against the famous Vogue cover, presumably to show the similarity.
The magazine story, which described the soon-to-be-Mrs. Trump's search for her gown during the couture shows, also contained many details about the dress that made news at the time and have resurfaced with the sale, including the fact that it weighed 60 pounds and took 550 hours to complete.
Almost immediately the news was embraced by numerous outlets, proclaiming, 'You Can Buy Melania Trump's Wedding Dress' (The Spectator) and 'How Much Would You Pay for Melania Trump's Wedding Dress?' (The Cut). As of Wednesday morning, the listing was being 'watched' by 224 people.
Leaving aside the fact that the seller acknowledges on the listing that she made 'a few changes' to the gown — more satin, more embroidery and straps — which means it no longer looks identical to Mrs. Trump's gown, there's another problem. The designer Hervé Pierre, Mrs. Trump's longtime stylist (he made her inauguration gowns in 2017 and 2025), said of her wedding dress, 'I stored the gown myself in Palm Beach.'
And then added, 'Two years ago.'
Neither the first lady's office nor the seller responded to multiple requests for comment. Dior likewise declined to comment on the dress, noting that it was a policy not to discuss interactions with couture clients. A spokesman pointed out, however, that a couture gown always comes with a label and a number. To authenticate it, he said, they would need to see the dress in person.
Mr. Pierre said that the wedding dress he stored in Florida for Mrs. Trump had a label on the side as well as a ribbon with a reference number. In the multiple close-ups of the gown for sale on eBay, none shows a label.
Alexis Hoopes, the vice president for fashion at eBay, said the company was founded on trust and referred to its widespread Authenticity Guarantee policy, which covers watches, handbags, jewelry, streetwear, sneakers and trading cards, though she acknowledged that the guarantee program did not extend to 'the item in question.'
Still, the decision to use eBay to sell a historic garment, albeit one that has been altered, is a peculiar one, said Cameron Silver, the owner of the Los Angeles vintage boutique Decades.
'I would always suggest an auction house for historic garments with provenance,' he said. Companies like Christie's have auctioned clothes from figures like Audrey Hepburn, while Julien's in London sold Princess Diana's gowns, and Kerry Taylor Auctions handled the clothes of Elizabeth Taylor, Leslie Caron and Jerry Hall.
The listing first came to attention through Liana Satenstein's Substack, Neverworns. Ms. Satenstein said she became aware of it through a friend, Patricia Torvalds, who was looking for a vintage wedding dress and had been corresponding with the seller. According to Ms. Torvalds, the seller, who has been on eBay since November 2021, has moved 119 items and has a positive feedback rating of 98.8 percent, said she had sourced the dress through another friend, who claimed to know Mrs. Trump.
According to eBay messages between the two women that were seen by The New York Times, the seller said the label was taken out when the dress was altered by the seamstress and never replaced. (She also has a number of other items listed on eBay, including a diamond wedding band made as a replica of the one Mrs. Trump wore on her wedding day.) She said that she was getting a lot of messages from people curious about the gown and its origins. Nevertheless, the listing is still up.
Where the dress may actually have come from is unclear. Often, when a well-known figure gets married in a public way and the gown is featured in a magazine like Vogue, it will be copied by any number of bridal designers and offered for sale. The original dress was inspired by a look from Mr. Galliano's 'Empress Sissi' Dior couture collection in February 2004, so it is possible that a sample was sold.
In any case, the willingness of many people to accept the idea that the dress could have belonged to Mrs. Trump and that she was willing to sell her wedding gown — a garment it is generally accepted most people keep forever — is a reflection of the complicated feelings people have about the Trumps, their relationship and the precedents they have set in monetizing their lives.
Indeed, Mrs. Trump herself sells jewelry, ornaments and her own memecoin via her website. In 2022, in a break with first lady precedent, she auctioned off another historic piece of clothing from her wardrobe rather than donating it to the National Archive: the white hat she wore in 2018 during the first Trump administration on the occasion of the French state visit.
Of course, at the time of that sale, the first lady made sure to sign the hat just in case there was any doubt where it had come from.
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