Reply to The Trump Women and their Fashion Mishaps

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I wonder how many coats she had as a teenager in Community Slovenia.  I’d guess one. [/quote]

She probably had an italian tailored wool coat in a pastel color from United colors of Benetton bought in Italy or Austria. Or maybe one of the coats made in Yugoslavia - they were top notch quality at the time and especially Slovenia produced excellent woolmark quality knits. 
[b]Yes, you’d have just one coat, nothing wrong with that.[/b] [/quote]
I didn't take the comment you were replying to as implying there was anything wrong with her having one coat. I took it to mean she grew up in a communist country and likely wouldn't have had the wardrobe of an American teen. I know her parents were educated and had good jobs but they were still living under communism.

Would she have even had access to United Colors of Benetton? I don't know much about communist Slovenia but I imagine it was like Russia and there was a ban on imported goods.

[/quote]

I was a bit of a Sovietologist decades ago when that was a thing.  Yugoslavia had access to more western goods because it wasn’t behind the iron curtain but I’d be surprised if it was the same as living in Austria or Italy.  In general communist countries tend to have more closed economies because they are state controlled with different attitudes toward import/export.   Anyway, it would be super interesting to have articles about that in particular — it’s sort of crazy we’ve had this First Lady for 5 years and know so little about her background and childhood.  If anyone reading this is from Yugoslavia. I’d love to know about fashion options in 1980s Yugoslavia!!! [/quote]
I have a Master's in History, focused on the Balkans, and I lived in Yugoslavia and know firsthand what it was like living there until the wars in the 90s. My parents were highly educated for that time. Tito's regime took much of my grandparents' land right after the war. The country was not Spartan nor lacking in much of anything until the late 80s. We had good clothes, but nobody had six pairs of jeans, and I did not have fancy tennis shoes until the late 80s.  I went shopping in Italy when I was 17, 18, and then 20; my parents sent me. I had a wool coat, I had great vacations, every single year we went to the sea, sometimes to Greece. Most winters, we went to the mountains. My dad would go to Western Germany and buy us presents.

Things changed in the 90s. At that time, it was hard going, but for my wedding in 1993, my parents, in the worst time ever in my part of Yugoslavia, bought me a fur coat as a wedding present. I married an American, and financially, when you take into account economies and standard of living, we were much better off than my husband's family.

Based on the jobs Melania's dad and mom said they had, we were better off than her family. However, she was in Slovenia, which had the best economy in former Yugoslavia. Slovenia is a beautiful country; her childhood was pastoral, running around everywhere, and just plain fantastic, if I were to presume it was very similar to mine.

I assure you, life in Yugoslavia, for the more educated strata, was better than life in Italy until at least the mid-80s. Italy was very poor, but, like Yugoslavia, it would depend on your family's income. Villages in Italy were impoverished.[/quote]

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