Melania Trump’s Dior Wedding Dress is Not Being Sold on eBay

Melania Trump celebrated her 20th wedding anniversary in January, and an eBay seller claims to be selling a remnant of her wedding day.

An eBay listing being pitched as “Melania Trump wedding dress designed by John Galliano and Dior” has bids starting at $45,000. However, the John Galliano-designed Dior haute couture gown is stowed away in Mar-a-Lago, according to one source.

Before exchanging vows with Donald Trump, the former model, whose maiden name is Knauss, chose the strapless haute couture gown in Paris with guidance from Vogue’s Sally Singer and André Leon Talley. Her voluminous and intricate choice required 300 feet of material and 550 hours of work just for the embellishment. Melania Trump’s international shopping trip was detailed in a 14-page Vogue story and led to a February 2005 Vogue cover.

The story was flagged with an “Exclusive” cover line that read “Donald Trump’s New Bride: The Ring, the Dress, the Wedding, the Jet, the Party.” The fact that that has been Trump’s one and only cover on the Condé Nast fashion magazine has been a point of consternation with FLOTUS, since several of her predecessors were cover stars during their White House years.

Trump’s wedding gown reportedly cost $187,000 and a total of 1,000 hours of work to assemble. A Dior representative declined to comment about the eBay gown Tuesday afternoon. The media relations team at eBay had not responded to an inquiry about the company’s authentication policy.

A similar looking dress appears to have been featured on the Dior haute couture runway in 2005.

The unnamed eBay seller, who is identified as “svjabc1,” included Trump wedding photos in the post, as well as one of the elaborate gowns on a hanger. The former Vogue senior writer Liana Satenstein flagged the eBay offer in her Substack “Neverworns.” She told WWD Tuesday that she does not know the seller and had not seen the dress in person. Once the final offer is accepted, the eBay dress will be shipped from Massapequa, N.Y., between March 28 and April 3.

Event designer Preston Bailey orchestrated the reception in Mar-a-Lago’s ballroom, with white roses, gardenias and hydrangeas and 9-foot candelabras on the dinner tables at the bride’s request, and despite the groom’s opposition. The 350-person crowd included Hillary Clinton, Heidi Klum, Kelly Ripa, Les Moonves, Tina Brown, Matt Lauer, Katie Couric, Tony Bennett, Richard Branson, Mohammed Al-Fayed, Steve Wynn, Donna Summer, Gayle King, Billy Joel, Simon Cowell, Kimora Lee, Russell Simmons, Rudy Giuliani and more.

The wedding, which was FLOTUS’ first and Trump’s third, cost between $350,000 and $400,000, “which at that time was a lot of money,” Bailey said earlier this year. “I also know that whatever she wanted, he didn’t question it. Whenever I submitted a bill, it was immediately paid by him or his office,” Bailey said.

And the crowd lived it up, according to Bailey, who told WWD, “This was party, party, party and so social. There were a lot of cliques. Everybody seemed to know each other. This party was really going. There was no downtime so to speak.” (And an after party was held by the pool. But Bailey said they abided by the town of Palm Beach’s restrictions, “so we were very careful not to go too late,” he said.)