In the more-is-more New York of the 1980s and 1990s, when Ivana Trump was at the height of her power, “social media” was made up of party pages and gossip columns, and the best way to make a name for yourself was to go out. . A lot.
Ivana went outside.
“She certainly knew how to get into the papers,” said 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 events in New York, grinning next to the richest, most famous and most powerful people in town.
Arm in arm with Estée Lauder at Lincoln Center. Sitting next to Luciano Pavarotti for dinner at the Central Park Boathouse. Laughing with Jackie Mason, treating Michael Douglas to stories, being carried like a bride by Fabio, shaking hands with Don King.
Her dresses, jewelry and hair were shiny and comically oversized, even by 80s standards: a dazzling, metallic pink floor-length dress, inlaid with crystals, adorned with a peplum and a matching stole – acres of fabric draped over one shoulder. , finished with a stiff pearl and a jeweled choker as the icing on the cake.
“She was definitely part of the fabric of New York’s nightlife, uptown — and downtown,” said Michael Musto, the former Village Voice nightlife columnist.
If you had a voracious appetite for magazines and tabloids, Mrs. Trump, whose death at age 73 announced on Thursday, was everywhere. She was both bigger than life and just one of the many Manhattan characters who were your neighbors.
Driving down FDR Drive in a taxi, you may have caught a brief glimpse of the yacht called Trump Princess, which is anchored at the Water Club.
“I’d call her the name in bold,” says Patrick McMullan, the photographer and columnist who took thousands of photos 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.”
Ivana Trump (1949-2022)
The Czech-American businesswoman, whose high-profile marriage to former President Donald Trump in the 1980s made him a household name, died at the age of 73.
Le Circus. The Pierre. La Grenouille. Where there were cameras and rich people, there she was.
“Donald has never shown 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 really wanted to be part of the whole social scene. So she started taking a more active role in philanthropy, the avenue New Yorkers with new money have always used to become part of the establishment.”
If you grew up in New York, some names were known because they were also mansions, museums, streets or neighborhoods: Hamilton, Bloomingdale, Hewitt, Cooper, Vanderbilt, Astor. But the Trump name was new and decorated with garish gold lettering on a building, rather than carved in stone from the turn of the century.
Maybe Ivana was too flashy, too hungry, too new money for the old money crowd at first. But she stormed in. “I remember going to the Kentucky Derby once and Marylou Whitney invited her on her plane,” Mr. Rush said, referring to Marie Louise Whitney, wife of Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney. “The Whitneys were certainly as good a name as you could wish for.”
Mr Colacello said: “One of the things Donald and Ivana had most in common was that they both loved publicity. They both wanted to be famous. In a way, they wanted to be more famous than rich.”
That said, there was evidence that while Ivana played hard, she also worked hard: “Ivana became a businesswoman,” said Mr. Colacello. “She ran Atlantic City. She ran 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 first name with New York—from the party page to the cover. There were ridiculous puns (“Ivana Better Deal‘), but also some sympathetic allies.
“I loved her and her buoyancy, and her cheerfulness, and her nimble navigation through the social rapids of New York,” said Mr. Rush. And her resilience. Her ability to survive that marriage — and recreate herself.”
She was often seen with the gossip columnist Liz Smith, and in Barbie pink on the cover of October 1990 of New York magazine, she came across as a Zsa Zsa Gabor in a “Green Acres”-esque character — or even Patsy Stone from “Absolutely Fabulous” — deeply shallow but seriously amusing, fluttering around and flipping everything in gold.
While her ex-husband became something of a local villain, Ivana took on the role of the divorced gay woman – dating younger men, skiing in St. Moritz, boating in Saint-Tropez, a cameo in the movie “The First Wives Club.”
“She almost became a feminist icon,” said Mr. Colacello. “She was fun. She was funny. She was hot, and she was a little cranky.”
And she kept dating for decades.
“She came to a party I had at Lucky Cheng’s, a drag restaurant,” Mr. Musto said. He said Ivana was not only “delightful,” but also generous: When a guest admired her jewelry — from the Ivana Trump collection, of course — Ivana took off her necklace and gave it to the stranger. “Sure, I don’t think it was worth millions,” said Mr. Musto. “But still.”
Mr. Musto added that while he didn’t know much about Ivana’s personal politics, he admired her for “surviving The Donald with style.” And she was always welcome at downtown parties: “Believe me, the drag queens were overjoyed to see her, because some of them would regularly dress as her.”
Every once in a while, if you were going out too, you’d see her, in a glitzy ensemble, hair painted. She and her lavish updo often sat at the right table at benefit lunches and in the front row at fashion shows.
Some will remember her as filled with the kind of joie de vivre that every wealthy single mother in New York enjoys.
“She believed in society with a capital S, but she was very level-headed,” said Mr. Colacello. Her ex-husband spent four years in Washington, DC, then moved to Florida; Ivana stayed in New York, an Upper East Sider, to the end.
One of the last pictures of Ivana to grace the tabloids was taken long after her glamorous heyday. But there she was in 2018, wearing a leopard print jacket while she was still buy street meat from a salesman on East 64th Street.
Mr. Colacello laughed. “I mean, she probably befriended the man.”