Dennis Basso, a longtime friend and furrier, recalls
his many collaborations with the first Ms. Trump.
By Jacob Bernstein and Vanessa Friedman
July 15, 2022
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/15/fashion/ivana-trump-style.html
“Ivana Trump’s look wasn’t for everyone,” the designer
Dennis Basso said Thursday afternoon, a few hours after Ms. Trump’s death was
announced by former President Donald J. Trump, her ex-husband, in a statement
posted on his social networking platform, Truth Social.
But it was, for the decade in which she and Mr. Trump
first made their public mark, the epitome of a certain go-go 1980s New York
style. One caught by Tom Wolfe’s “The Bonfire of the Vanities” and defined by
chinchilla stoles, leopard-print shirtdresses, and Upper East Side ready-fitted
trousers in soft colors. One in which your limo could never stretch too long,
your hair and shoulder pads could never be too big, or your furs too fabulous.
And for nearly 40 years, even as styles changed
drastically, Ms. Trump and Mr. Basso remained as two of the most consistent
proponents of that paradigm.
Mr. Basso, 68, said he first met Ms. Trump in
September 1983, when she came to his debut show at the Regency hotel on the
Upper East Side of Manhattan.
She sat in the front row of his show that day near
Joan Collins, another diva of the decade, then came backstage. “She said with
that fantastic accent: ‘Dahling, I really don’t know you. But we’re going to be
friends,’” Mr. Basso recalled. “I thought: ‘Oh, my God. Like, how could this
be?’”
Trump Tower had recently opened near Bergdorf Goodman.
Not everyone was enamored of the couple inhabiting the triplex at the top, but
it was hard to argue that they did not perfectly capture the “greed is good”
ethos of the era.
The day after Mr. Basso’s debut show, Ms. Trump
materialized in his Seventh Avenue showroom and marveled at the size. “It’s
smaller than my dressing room closet” was how she put it, Mr. Basso recalled.
But by the time she left, he had an order for seven
magnificent fur pieces.
“One was a pale silver silk shantung maxi-coat lined
in deep, deep sheared magenta fur,” Mr. Basso said. “She bought a chinchilla
coat, a sable jacket, a big cashmere evening wrap. Remember the year! If you
said you bought that now, it would be, like, ‘Have you lost your mind?’ But it
was the height of all that glamour. Everybody was on that bandwagon.”
The relationship between Ms. Trump and Mr. Basso was
by no means exclusive. Most of her suits and evening gowns came from Arnold
Scaasi, Oscar de la Renta, Bill Blass, Lacroix, Halston and Versace.
.
But because Ms. Trump was “living in her own movie,”
as Mr. Basso put it, and because she saw the most important scene as being the
one in which she steps out of the car to make a grand entrance, outerwear
became the mainstay — usually fur — and he was the guy to get it from.
At first, Ms. Trump bought off the rack from Mr.
Basso. Then, things got collaborative.
“We couldn’t have made the shoulders bigger or
fuller,” Mr. Basso said. “She always wanted to show her waist. She would call
and say: ‘I love that. Can I have it in purple?’ ‘I love that. Can I have that
in green?’ One year, around Christmastime, she called and said: ‘I’m in Aspen.
I want a red sheared mink ski suit.’ Not being a great skier, I said, ‘But when
you fall, it’s going to get wet.’”
Mr. Basso paused for effect, then added: “She said,
‘Dahling. I don’t fall.’”
So off Mr. Basso went, and soon enough, Ms. Trump was
sailing down the slopes in it, as self-confident and unapologetically opulent
as always.
Did she usually pay for her clothes?
“Always,” he said, though he added that she wasn’t shy
about invoking the “friends and family” discount.
Which was fine with him. “This was a symbiotic
relationship in which no person got more than the other,” he said.
The business Ms. Trump generated for him as both a
muse and a supporter — in addition to her friendship, she hosted Basso fashion
shows at her husband’s Taj Mahal hotel in Atlantic City — was “huge,” Mr. Basso
said.
Tastes changed some in the early 1990s. Minimalism and
PETA were not friends of furriers.
But Ms. Trump had grown up in Czechoslovakia, shortly
after it became a communist dictatorship. Once she got to the United States and
became wildly rich, she had little interest in making herself over in
existential Helmut Lang and deconstructed Martin Margiela.
“She came to America from a communist country,” Mr.
Basso said. “She was going to say her piece.”
This included when Mr. Trump left her for a younger
woman in 1990: Marla Maples.
Soon enough, the tabloids her husband had used to
build buzz for him and his properties became weapons Ms. Trump bludgeoned him
with. She made the 1990 Met Gala her liberation celebration, complete with an
actual makeover.
The hot-rollered-to-the-heavens hairstyle was gone. In
its place was a Brigitte Bardot-inspired bouffant. The dress was a form-fitting
black off-the-shoulder gown. Her date that evening was Boaz Mazur, the
movie-star-handsome Oscar de la Renta sales director.
“She was really able to dust herself off and keep
going,” Mr. Basso said, going on to recall the line she later delivered while
making a cameo appearance in “The First Wives Club”: “Don’t get mad, get
everything!”
In 1992, Ms. Trump was granted sole custody of her
children with Mr. Trump — Ivanka, Eric and Donald Jr. — and signed the deed for
a $2.5 million townhouse on East 64th Street.
One morning, Mr. Basso picked up The New York Post to
find a story that said the townhouse had been robbed.
He said that after his initial horror upon learning of
the robbery, he was shocked to read that what was missing was an astronomically
expensive coat from his label. “It was hanging in my office,” he said. Between
her move out of Trump Tower and the renovations of her new home, he said, “one
of her assistants sent it over for safekeeping.”
After that, Ms. Trump walked in fashion shows for such
friends as Thierry Mugler, and even closed Mr. Basso’s 1995 collection at the
Pierre. Joanna Lumley mimicked Ms. Trump’s look while playing a killer cougar
on the British sitcom “Absolutely Fabulous.”
The show was shown in the United States by Comedy
Central and became a camp classic that cemented Ms. Trump’s haughty-queen image
— and ability to laugh at her own legend.
Of Ms. Lumley, Ms. Trump said, “She was good, but I
could have done it better,” Mr. Basso recalled.
From there, Ms. Trump got to work on House of Ivana, a
beauty-products and clothing company that was run briefly by Riccardo
Mazzucchelli, a suave Italian executive who two years later became Ms. Trump’s
next husband.
Like the one who came before him, Mr. Mazzucchelli had
a personality that was combustible and a father from whom he inherited much.
(According to the The Daily News, Mr. Mazzucchelli was
a founder, along with his father, who worked in mining, of an “architectural
planning and engineering firm that devised infrastructures for cities in
Nigeria, Uganda and other African and Middle East countries.”)
Naturally, Mr. Basso was on hand when Ms. Trump
married Mr. Mazzucchelli in 1995 at Le Cirque in New York. And naturally, he
was there for her during the tabloid divorce that followed less than two years
later.
“We were friends in good times and bad,” he said. “We
used to say, not every day is Christmas.” (Mr. Mazzucchelli died in 2017.)
In the 2000s, Ms. Trump’s life mimicked her
“Absolutely Fabulous” alter ego.
She began dating a dashing Italian actor named Rossano
Rubicondi, who was 23 years her junior, and she got a two-hour special on
Oxygen called “Ivana Young Man.”
Friends cautioned that the age difference could become
an issue.
But, Mr. Basso said, Ms. Trump once again had the
perfect one-liner: “I’d rather be the nanny than the nurse.”
In 2008, she married Mr. Rubicondi at Mar-a-Lago, the
Palm Beach, Fla., club that Mr. Trump calls home.
Ms. Trump’s close friend Nikki Haskell was a
bridesmaid. Ms. Haskell’s date was Mr. Basso, and the chocolate wedding cake
was 12 feet tall and flown in from Germany, according to People magazine.
Mr. Basso said it was probably the oldest wedding
party in history. And, “it was so much fun.”
But soon after that, it began to look as if all was
not well with Ms. Trump.
In 2009, Ms. Trump divorced Mr. Rubicondi. That year,
she was escorted off an airplane after a reported expletive-filled tirade
delivered to children who were playing in the aisle of first class.
But Mr. Basso said that as she portrayed things with
him, all was well. Ms. Trump, he said, wanted most of all to be known as a good
mother. And her relationship with her ex-husband Mr. Trump had been friendly in
recent years.
Still, Mr. Basso admitted, he saw a little less of Ms.
Trump in the last few years.
This was partly because of the pandemic, but also
because of more enduring changes to the social landscape. “Le Cirque,
Mortimer’s, Gino’s, the Four Seasons,” he said. “They no longer even exist.”
Still, Ms. Trump never dropped out of touch with Mr.
Basso and his husband, Michael Basso. “I spoke to her two weeks ago, my husband
was texting with her last week, and we saw her maybe a month ago for dinner at
Cipriani,” he said.
As he remembered it, she showed up on time and was in
fine form. “This was a sudden surprise,” he said of her death. “I’m a little
down. I’m a lot down.”
Jacob Bernstein is a reporter for the Styles desk. In
addition to writing profiles of fashion designers, artists and celebrities, he
has focused much of his attention on L.G.B.T. issues, philanthropy and the
world of furniture design. @bernsteinjacob
Vanessa Friedman was named the fashion director and
chief fashion critic in March 2014. In this role she leads global fashion coverage
for both The New York Times and International New York Times. @VVFriedman
Ivana’s New York
In the 1980s and ’90s, Ivana was on a first-name basis
with a city transfixed by fame and fashion.
Dodai
Stewart
By Dodai
Stewart
July 15,
2022
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/15/nyregion/ivana-trump-new-york-city.html
In the
more-is-more New York of the 1980s and 1990s, when Ivana Trump was at the
height of her powers, “social media” consisted of party pages and gossip
columns, and the best way to make your name was to go out. A lot.
Ivana went
out.
“She
certainly knew how to get in the papers,” said the author George Rush, who,
with his wife, Joanna Molloy, wrote the New York Daily News gossip column Rush
& Molloy from 1995 to 2010.
Ivana was
at all the big New York events, grinning alongside the most rich, famous and
powerful people in the city.
Arm in arm
with Estée Lauder at Lincoln Center. Seated next to Luciano Pavarotti for a
dinner at the Central Park Boathouse. Laughing it up with Jackie Mason,
regaling Michael Douglas with stories, being carried like a bride by Fabio,
shaking hands with Don King.
Her
dresses, jewelry and hair were shiny and comically oversize, even by ’80s
standards: An eye-searing metallic pink floor-length gown encrusted with
crystals, adorned with a peplum and a matching stole — acres of fabric draped
over one shoulder, finished with a stiff pearl and jeweled choker as the cherry
on top.
“She was
definitely part of the fabric of the New York nightlife scene, uptown — and
downtown,” said Michael Musto, the former Village Voice nightlife columnist.
If you had
a voracious appetite for magazines and tabloids, Ms. Trump, whose death at age
73 was announced on Thursday, was everywhere. She was both larger than life and
also just one of many Manhattan characters who were your neighbors.
Barreling
down the F.D.R. Drive in a cab, you may have caught a brief glimpse of the
yacht called Trump Princess, anchored at the Water Club.
“I would
call her the bold in the bold-faced name,” said Patrick McMullan, the
photographer and columnist who snapped thousands of images in his 30-year
career covering New York nightlife. “I covered that scene and I mean, I would
see Ivana every night. She loved being photographed.”
Le Cirque.
The Pierre. La Grenouille. Where there were cameras and rich people, there she
was.
“Donald
never showed much interest in so-called New York society,” said Bob Colacello,
the author and social commentator who wrote a 1992 Vanity Fair cover story
about Ivana. “But Ivana very much wanted to be part of the whole social scene.
So she started taking a more active role in philanthropy, which is the route
that new-money New Yorkers have always used to become part of the
establishment.”
If you grew
up in New York, some names were familiar because they were also mansions,
museums, streets or neighborhoods: Hamilton, Bloomingdale, Hewitt, Cooper,
Vanderbilt, Astor. But the Trump name was new, and emblazoned in garish gold
lettering on a building, rather than carved into turn-of-the-century stone.
Maybe at
first Ivana was too flashy, too hungry, too new-money for the old-money crowd.
But she barged in. “I remember going down to the Kentucky Derby once, and
Marylou Whitney had invited her on her plane,” Mr. Rush said, referring to
Marie Louise Whitney, the wife of Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney. “The Whitneys
were certainly as good a name as you could want.”
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Said Mr.
Colacello: “One of the things that Donald and Ivana had most in common was they
both loved publicity. They both wanted to be famous. In a way, they wanted to
be famous more than they wanted to be rich.”
When a
close-up of Ivana’s face graced the May 1989 cover of Spy magazine, she was
referred to as “the most superspecial Trump of all.” (Around the same time, her
husband was calling for New York State to reinstate the death penalty.)
That said,
there was evidence that while Ivana played hard, she also worked hard: “Ivana
became a businesswoman,” Mr. Colacello said. “She ran Atlantic City. She was
running the Plaza Hotel. She was like a general, barking orders, and she liked
it, and she was good at it.”
After all
the benefit events and galas and dinners, it was the divorce news that pushed
Ivana — who was absolutely on a first-name basis with New York — from the party
page to the cover. There were cringe-worthy puns (“Ivana Better Deal”), but
also some sympathetic allies.
“I liked
her and her buoyancy, and her good cheer, and her agile navigation through New
York’s social rapids,” said Mr. Rush. “And her resiliency. Her ability to
survive that marriage — and remake herself.”
She was
often seen with the gossip columnist Liz Smith, and, wearing Barbie pink on the
October 1990 cover of New York magazine, she came off as a Zsa Zsa Gabor in
“Green Acres”-esque character — or even Patsy Stone from “Absolutely Fabulous”
— deeply shallow but seriously amusing, flitting around, leafing everything in
gold.
While her
ex-husband became something of a local villain,
Ivana took up the role of the gay divorcée — dating younger men, skiing
in St. Moritz, boating in Saint-Tropez, a cameo in the movie “The First Wives
Club.”
“She became
almost like a feminist icon,” Mr. Colacello said. “She was fun. She was funny.
She was warm, and she was a little screwy.”
And she
kept going out, for decades.
“She came
to one party I had at Lucky Cheng’s, which was a drag restaurant,” said Mr.
Musto. He said not only was Ivana “delightful,” but generous: When a guest
admired her jewelry — from the Ivana Trump Collection, naturally — Ivana took
off her necklace and handed it to the stranger. “Of course, I don’t think it
was worth millions,” Mr. Musto said. “But still.”
Mr. Musto
added that while he didn’t know much about Ivana’s personal politics, he
admired her for having “survived The Donald with style.” And she was always
welcome at downtown parties: “Believe me, the drag queens were thrilled to see
her, because some of them would regularly dress like her.”
Now and
then, if you went out, too, you’d see her, in a glitzy ensemble, hair
lacquered. She and her lavish updo were often seated at the good table at
benefit luncheons and in the front row at fashion shows.
Some will
remember her as being filled with the kind of joie de vivre enjoyed by any
wealthy single mother living in New York.
“She
believed in society with a capital S, but she was very down to earth,” Mr.
Colacello said. Her ex-husband spent four years in Washington, D.C., and then
moved to Florida; Ivana stayed in New York, an Upper East Sider right until the
end.
One of the
last photographs of Ivana to grace the tabloids was taken long after her
glamorous heyday. But there she was in 2018, dressed in a leopard-print jacket
while she was buying some street meat from a vendor on East 64th Street.
Mr.
Colacello laughed. “I mean, she probably made friends with the guy.”
Ivana Trump died of blunt force injuries to her torso,
medical examiner says
Donald Trump’s first wife died aged 73 at her
Manhattan home and the fatal injuries are believed to be unintentional
Ramon
Antonio Vargas
Fri 15 Jul
2022 23.30 BST
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jul/15/ivana-trump-donald-trump-wife-death-cause
Ivana
Trump, the first wife of Donald Trump and the mother of his three oldest
children, died from blunt force injuries to her torso that she suffered after
an accidental fall, New York City’s chief medical examiner said Friday.
The former
president announced that Ivana Trump died aged 73 a day earlier at her
Manhattan home but didn’t include any details about the cause or manner of her
death. On Friday, a spokesperson for the New York City Office of Chief Medical
Examiner confirmed reports that Ivana Trump apparently fell inadvertently and
was found at the bottom of her home’s stairs.
US health
officials consider falls to be the leading cause of injury-related death for
people who are 65 years of age or older. About 64 out of 100,000 elderly people
die as a result of accidental falls, according to the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention.
Ivana Trump
was born in Zlin – now the Czech Republic – in 1949. She was a skier, ski
instructor and model before marrying Donald Trump in 1977, when he was a real
estate tycoon.
She
partnered with Trump in managing casinos and hotels while helping him become a
Manhattan and global socialite throughout the 1980s. She was also the mother to
his children Donald Jr, Ivanka and Eric.
The pair
divorced in 1992, with Donald Trump’s infidelity precipitating their split. He
later married and divorced Marla Maples, with whom he had daughter Tiffany and
is now with his third wife, Melania Knauss Trump, the mother of his son Barron
and the first lady during his presidency from 2017 to 2021.
Ivana and
Donald Trump in the 1980s. As vice-president of interior design for the Trump
Organization, Ivana influenced real-estate projects in New York and Atlantic
City.
Ivana Trump
had said she supported her ex-husband’s run for the White House but said she
wanted “this whole thing to be over with” after he lost to Joe Biden and
desperately sought to overturn the result, including by telling his supporters
to “fight like hell” shortly before hundreds of them mounted a deadly attack on
the Capitol.
She said
she believed her children “enjoyed being around Donald and running the election
and seeing what will happen” but she wanted them to one day “be able to live
their normal lives”.
On Thursday
afternoon, emergency responders investigating a call from Ivana Trump’s home on
Manhattan’s Upper East Side found her unconscious. They pronounced her dead at
the scene and noted that there did “not appear to be any criminality”, police
said in a statement.
Trump,
Donald Jr and Ivanka were supposed to be questioned Friday as part of a New
York civil investigation into their business dealings.
But the New
York state attorney general’s office postponed the depositions as a result of
Ivana Trump’s death. New dates for the depositions weren’t immediately set.
A statement
from a state AG spokesperson read: “We offer our condolences to the Trump
family.”
The
Associated Press contributed to this report
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