 "Melania Trump: Walking to Washington")
On days when Melanija Knavs could not play outside or grew tired of knitting her navy blue sweaters, she and her friends would exchange notes along the lines of yarn they strung between their apartment block balconies.
In clear handwriting, Melanija mused about the boys of her dreams.
She could not have seen what was coming. Melanija Knavs is now Melania Trump, and she is one election away from being the first foreign-born first lady since Louisa Adams. She addressed millions of Americans on Monday night in a televised speech at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland.
But interviews with her former classmates, friends of her family and others who knew them during her youth in Slovenia suggest that her transformation owes less to chance than to the Knavs family's determination to seize openings and avoid getting stuck.
Her father, a larger-than-life personality who reminds her childhood friends of Donald Trump, belonged to the Communist Party, an exclusive club whose members sometimes joined because of career ambitions as much as ideology. Her mother, an industrious and striking woman, went from harvesting red onions on her family's farm to a career in the town's textile factory. She always found time to make sure her two daughters dressed to impress, sewing clothes for them after her work shift ended.
Melania herself trained her bright eyes on the next thing. Once she left Sevnica for high school in Ljubljana, now Slovenia's capital, she rarely came back to see her old friends. Once she left Ljubljana for a modelling career in Milan and then elsewhere in Europe, Slovenia receded from view. And once she moved to New York, where she caught the eye of Donald Trump, 24 years her senior, during a Fashion Week party at the Kit Kat Club, she never looked back.
"She tried to find opportunities," said Damijan Kracina, 46, a high school classmate. "And took them."
Melania, born in 1970, grew up in this hilly town of 4,500 best known around Slovenia, at least until Donald Trump entered the presidential race, for its medieval castle and annual salami festival. Then, Slovenia was the northern region of Yugoslavia, ruled by Josip Broz Tito, a Communist dictator who kept his distance from the Soviet Union and allowed more freedoms than did other Eastern bloc leaders.
But under Tito, there were clear benefits to being a member of the Communist Party, to which only a tiny percentage of Slovenians belonged. Some inherited membership through parents, particularly if they had resisted the Nazis, as Tito had; others by exhibiting unusual talent.
While it is not clear how Melania's father, Viktor, joined - available records in Ljubljana simply list him as a member - others from the Sevnica Communist Party mentioned his work as a driver for a neighbouring mayor and then for the director of the government-owned textile factory, Jutranjka, across the river, as possible entry points.
While the Knavses, along with Melania, declined to be interviewed about their years in Slovenia, a spokeswoman for the Trump campaign, Hope Hicks, said that Viktor Knavs had never been an "active member" of the party.
Donald Trump, in an interview last month, said he had never discussed the topic with his father-in-law. "But he was pretty successful over there," he said. "It's a different kind of success than you have here. But he was successful."
After being introduced by her husband on Monday night as "the next first lady of the United States," Melania spoke about her love of the US and her home country.
"I was born in Slovenia, a small and then-Communist country," she said, adding that her parents instilled in her a love of fashion, beauty and business, and - in a part of her speech that appeared to be copied nearly word-for-word from a 2008 speech by Michelle Obama - the value of working hard "for what you want in life."
In 1985, Melania left Sevnica, travelling on the narrow roads along the slow-moving Sava River, green from the reflection of the wooded hills, and through coal mining towns on the way to Ljubljana. There she attended the Secondary School of Design and Photography, housed in an arcaded Renaissance monastery.
She lived in an apartment that her father, who had opened a bicycle and car parts shop in Ljubljana, had bought a few years earlier on the outskirts of the city. The building superintendent, Joze Vuk, lived on their floor, and he recalled that Viktor Knavs was displeased that after he had paid for his unit, the government decided to set aside some of the apartments as rentals for construction workers.
"We were all angry because most of the residents were not prepared to invest in the block," said Vuk, who also owned an apartment. "They were renters of a public property and did not care."
Viktor Knavs sought to distinguish himself from his neighbours. "He always wore a tie, smart clothes and carried a briefcase," Vuk said. "You could not avoid noticing him."
Melania and her older sister, Ines, also stood out, for their looks, their wardrobe and the makeup they put on whenever they left the apartment. At school, Melania kept her distance from peers listening to the Cure or Metallica, Kracina said, and gravitated toward a clique of pop music fans who hung out at the Horse's Tail bar by the Triple Bridge in Ljubljana.
Around the same time, Melania began a process that would carry her away from Slovenia. In January 1987, the photographer Stane Jerko spotted her and asked if she would be interested in modelling.
She proved somewhat wooden, but "pridna - diligent, obedient," Jerko said. She told him she wanted to get better. Jerko passed the photographs he snapped of Melania - hair up, hair down, gym clothes, flowing dress - to a Slovenian cultural centre, which admitted her to a fashion course for models in the fall of 1987.
Melania's entire family sensed potential in her modelling. After high school, she concentrated on her career, dropping out of architecture school. (She still claims on her website to have graduated.)
In 1992, a year after Slovenia's independence, Jerko saw Melania on the catwalk at the Grand Hotel Toplice on Lake Bled. Twenty years later, she and Donald Trump dined there with her parents. That day trip amounted to her husband's only visit to Slovenia. "At least I can say that I went," Donald Trump said. When asked if his wife, who he said spoke warmly about her Slovenian youth, hoped for him to see her hometown, he added: "I went to Slovenia. The fact that I even went there was very much appreciated."
A second-place finish in Jana magazine's Slovenian Face of the Year contest in 1992 expanded Melania's ambitions. In a fashion video for a Slovenian label, she wore a skirt suit, exited a plane shadowed by bodyguards and signed papers at the national library. "She was acting like the president of the United States," said Andrej Kosak, the director. She would soon Germanise her name to Melania Knauss and become an international model.
These days in Sevnica, where Melania made a $25,000 contribution to a hospital after her 2005 wedding, residents are fascinated by tales of their local girl made great.
Mirjana Jelancic, a classmate of Melania's who is now the principal of their old school, recalled a conversation she had over coffee last August with Melania's mother. Her mother told Jelancic that she had asked her daughter what to do with all the sweaters she had knitted as a child. " 'Throw them away,' " Melania told her mother, who said she replied, testily, "Come home, pick some out and throw them away yourself."
Jelancic suggested a compromise. Melania now intends to donate those old clothes to a planned exhibit at the school dedicated to Melania Trump, the town's most famous brand name.
In clear handwriting, Melanija mused about the boys of her dreams.
She could not have seen what was coming. Melanija Knavs is now Melania Trump, and she is one election away from being the first foreign-born first lady since Louisa Adams. She addressed millions of Americans on Monday night in a televised speech at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland.
But interviews with her former classmates, friends of her family and others who knew them during her youth in Slovenia suggest that her transformation owes less to chance than to the Knavs family's determination to seize openings and avoid getting stuck.
Her father, a larger-than-life personality who reminds her childhood friends of Donald Trump, belonged to the Communist Party, an exclusive club whose members sometimes joined because of career ambitions as much as ideology. Her mother, an industrious and striking woman, went from harvesting red onions on her family's farm to a career in the town's textile factory. She always found time to make sure her two daughters dressed to impress, sewing clothes for them after her work shift ended.
Melania herself trained her bright eyes on the next thing. Once she left Sevnica for high school in Ljubljana, now Slovenia's capital, she rarely came back to see her old friends. Once she left Ljubljana for a modelling career in Milan and then elsewhere in Europe, Slovenia receded from view. And once she moved to New York, where she caught the eye of Donald Trump, 24 years her senior, during a Fashion Week party at the Kit Kat Club, she never looked back.
"She tried to find opportunities," said Damijan Kracina, 46, a high school classmate. "And took them."
Melania, born in 1970, grew up in this hilly town of 4,500 best known around Slovenia, at least until Donald Trump entered the presidential race, for its medieval castle and annual salami festival. Then, Slovenia was the northern region of Yugoslavia, ruled by Josip Broz Tito, a Communist dictator who kept his distance from the Soviet Union and allowed more freedoms than did other Eastern bloc leaders.
But under Tito, there were clear benefits to being a member of the Communist Party, to which only a tiny percentage of Slovenians belonged. Some inherited membership through parents, particularly if they had resisted the Nazis, as Tito had; others by exhibiting unusual talent.
While it is not clear how Melania's father, Viktor, joined - available records in Ljubljana simply list him as a member - others from the Sevnica Communist Party mentioned his work as a driver for a neighbouring mayor and then for the director of the government-owned textile factory, Jutranjka, across the river, as possible entry points.
While the Knavses, along with Melania, declined to be interviewed about their years in Slovenia, a spokeswoman for the Trump campaign, Hope Hicks, said that Viktor Knavs had never been an "active member" of the party.
Donald Trump, in an interview last month, said he had never discussed the topic with his father-in-law. "But he was pretty successful over there," he said. "It's a different kind of success than you have here. But he was successful."
After being introduced by her husband on Monday night as "the next first lady of the United States," Melania spoke about her love of the US and her home country.
"I was born in Slovenia, a small and then-Communist country," she said, adding that her parents instilled in her a love of fashion, beauty and business, and - in a part of her speech that appeared to be copied nearly word-for-word from a 2008 speech by Michelle Obama - the value of working hard "for what you want in life."
In 1985, Melania left Sevnica, travelling on the narrow roads along the slow-moving Sava River, green from the reflection of the wooded hills, and through coal mining towns on the way to Ljubljana. There she attended the Secondary School of Design and Photography, housed in an arcaded Renaissance monastery.
She lived in an apartment that her father, who had opened a bicycle and car parts shop in Ljubljana, had bought a few years earlier on the outskirts of the city. The building superintendent, Joze Vuk, lived on their floor, and he recalled that Viktor Knavs was displeased that after he had paid for his unit, the government decided to set aside some of the apartments as rentals for construction workers.
"We were all angry because most of the residents were not prepared to invest in the block," said Vuk, who also owned an apartment. "They were renters of a public property and did not care."
Viktor Knavs sought to distinguish himself from his neighbours. "He always wore a tie, smart clothes and carried a briefcase," Vuk said. "You could not avoid noticing him."
Melania and her older sister, Ines, also stood out, for their looks, their wardrobe and the makeup they put on whenever they left the apartment. At school, Melania kept her distance from peers listening to the Cure or Metallica, Kracina said, and gravitated toward a clique of pop music fans who hung out at the Horse's Tail bar by the Triple Bridge in Ljubljana.
Around the same time, Melania began a process that would carry her away from Slovenia. In January 1987, the photographer Stane Jerko spotted her and asked if she would be interested in modelling.
She proved somewhat wooden, but "pridna - diligent, obedient," Jerko said. She told him she wanted to get better. Jerko passed the photographs he snapped of Melania - hair up, hair down, gym clothes, flowing dress - to a Slovenian cultural centre, which admitted her to a fashion course for models in the fall of 1987.
Melania's entire family sensed potential in her modelling. After high school, she concentrated on her career, dropping out of architecture school. (She still claims on her website to have graduated.)
In 1992, a year after Slovenia's independence, Jerko saw Melania on the catwalk at the Grand Hotel Toplice on Lake Bled. Twenty years later, she and Donald Trump dined there with her parents. That day trip amounted to her husband's only visit to Slovenia. "At least I can say that I went," Donald Trump said. When asked if his wife, who he said spoke warmly about her Slovenian youth, hoped for him to see her hometown, he added: "I went to Slovenia. The fact that I even went there was very much appreciated."
A second-place finish in Jana magazine's Slovenian Face of the Year contest in 1992 expanded Melania's ambitions. In a fashion video for a Slovenian label, she wore a skirt suit, exited a plane shadowed by bodyguards and signed papers at the national library. "She was acting like the president of the United States," said Andrej Kosak, the director. She would soon Germanise her name to Melania Knauss and become an international model.
These days in Sevnica, where Melania made a $25,000 contribution to a hospital after her 2005 wedding, residents are fascinated by tales of their local girl made great.
Mirjana Jelancic, a classmate of Melania's who is now the principal of their old school, recalled a conversation she had over coffee last August with Melania's mother. Her mother told Jelancic that she had asked her daughter what to do with all the sweaters she had knitted as a child. " 'Throw them away,' " Melania told her mother, who said she replied, testily, "Come home, pick some out and throw them away yourself."
Jelancic suggested a compromise. Melania now intends to donate those old clothes to a planned exhibit at the school dedicated to Melania Trump, the town's most famous brand name.
© 2016 The New York Times