Melania Trump's Hair Transformation Throughout The Years

Fashion talks, and so does hair. Melania Trump is always telling a story through her looks. For instance, at the 2025 inauguration of President Donald Trump, Melania opted for a Carmen Sandiego-style hat made of blue wool and finished with a white band. It shrouded her eyes and hid most of her face. The message was clear: I'm here, but you can't look at me — a reasonable reaction after years of media malice. When she and her husband left the White House in 2021, she boarded Air Force One dressed in black and landed in Florida wearing a bright orange Gucci dress. The swap to a cheerful outfit for her return to civilian life made rumors that Melania didn't enjoy her time in the White House seem true. 

The fact that Melania was hardly present at all on her husband's campaign trail in 2024 — meaning we saw no style from her — was a clear enough message in itself. She wasn't keen to get back into politics. Nonetheless, Melania has returned as first lady, and while she may or may not be thrilled, fashion lovers are chomping at the bit to see her second-term style. While her clothes can steal the show, no doubt about it, Melania's hair is also a story in and of itself. Track her locks throughout the decades, and you get a pretty good sense of where she was at in her life. From childhood to party girl model in Manhattan, to mom to the White House, Melania's hair is like a navigational device that tells us what's going on.

Melania Trump's sister, Ines Knauss, frequently shares throwback photos of her sibling on Instagram. Thanks to these touching family photos, people get a better sense of who Melania is and what her childhood was like. Melania was born in 1970 in Novo Mesto, Slovenia. After moving to Milan and Paris to pursue a career in modeling, her success took her to the United States in 1996. While her hair would undergo many style and color changes during that time, we want to know what it looked like when it all started. 

While Melania's childhood photos are sweet, they also offer a great glimpse of her childhood hair. We get to see what her natural hair color was and how she wore it as a kid. So, thanks to Knauss, we know that Melania is naturally a brunette and was a very cute baby. We also get a sense that her hair was a big thing from the beginning. In one sweet photo that Knauss shared to Instagram in 2019, Melania sits with an older woman. Melania's hair is cut in bangs and is half pulled up in a small ponytail on the top of her head. Her rich, chocolate brown hair is firmly established as her natural color, a tone she would keep for many years — long after she left Slovenia and found her way to New York.

Sorry to say it, but Melania Trump did not have the best hair in the late '90s and early 2000s. This was the heyday of her modeling career in New York City, right when she and Donald Trump started dating. There's no doubt about it: Melania is beautiful, so she always looks good. However, in terms of her hair evolution, we're glad this period is firmly in the past. Melania wore her long, brown hair in a severe middle part and styled it in disheveled waves. Blame it on the New York humidity, but the front pieces of her hair appeared stringy and greasy, while the rest of it couldn't decide if it was wavy or straight. 

Of course, these records are all part of the magic of style transformations. Melania has thin hair that doesn't hold a lot of volume, and she wasn't doing the right things at this point in her life to amplify her locks. For example, there are certain kinds of haircuts that make thin hair look thicker. The fact that she was wearing her hair long and without notable layering means there wasn't lightness to create movement, aside from the few unfortunate face-framing pieces. Melania would have a long way to go before she got to the luscious mane we know her for today. 

It seems like even Melania Trump got sick of her straight hair. Going for a bold change, she showed up at the opening of the opera "Aida" with Donald Trump on March 23, 2000, with some seriously tight curls and wild teasing. She certainly got the volume she was looking for, and her big lion's mane of hair that night was dramatically different from what she had previously done. While a change is always fun, Melania's hair was still in its evolution toward a more polished coif. The messy, tight curls weren't her final destination, and, like so many of us, it appeared that she would later benefit from tips to get the most out of a curling wand. Until then, it would be either the tight curls or straight hair. 

There were a lot of things on the horizon for Melania; her life was to soon drastically change. She and Donald would marry in 2005, and they would welcome their only child together, son Barron Trump, in March 2006. After motherhood reshaped her life, another fresh chapter would start when her husband's political ambitions thrust her family into a global spotlight. Like her hair along the way, Melania's whole life would radically transform.

Melania Trump's hair changed significantly once her husband, Donald Trump, began his political ventures. He announced his presidential run in June 2015, and his first campaign took off after that. While Melania has always been reluctant to join her husband in the political space, she did make the odd appearance, and as such, showed off her newly styled hair. On July 18, 2016, Melania addressed the Republican National Convention crowd in Cleveland, Ohio. She wore a white dress and styled her hair in a messy middle part, nothing too severe. She wore her hair long, and it was styled in loose curls. It was certainly a much more deliberate, polished look than we had seen on her in the late '90s and early 2000s, back when she was a model in New York. To better suit the political atmosphere, Melania wore her hair more professionally. 

Melania has always been one to choose a middle part over a side part, but the effect of the middle part, and her overall new hairdo, didn't come without certain criticism. American fashion journalist André Leon Talley told Maureen Dowd of The New York Times that Melania's new hair was more of a style rut than anything. "I am so tired of the long hair falling on both sides of her face," Talley said. "She has to upgrade her coiffure. She's very much like a high, super, superglamorous Stepford Wife." Not a win! 

As first lady, Melania Trump quickly solidified a go-to hairstyle. Rarely did she change things up, save for the odd moment when she wore her hair up in a French twist, like at the inauguration in January 2017. The rest of the time, Melania wore it parted down the middle, loosely curled, and with dyed blond ends. In the world of highlights, babylights, and balayage, Melania is definitely a balayage girl, rocking softly painted hints of blond nearer her ends. This final effect, which people have come to expect from Melania's hair at this point, is very deliberate. 

Her longtime hair stylist, Mordechai Alvow, explained that there was actually political strategy behind Melania's hair. "We wanted a constant that allowed America to get to know her in a certain way. She wanted to look approachable," Alvow told The Telegraph. "We also wanted her to be comfortable and show the public who she really is." He also noted that Melania loves her hair on the longer side. 

Melania's style became such a signature look that celebrities who were politically against her husband, Donald Trump, used her hair as a way to express this. Olivia Wilde posted a new haircut on Instagram in December 2016 with shorter locks and the hashtag "#nomoremelaniahair." Prior to that, Wilde also had balayage coloring and long locks, so her chop was a political departure from the Melania look. 

Looking back at Melania Trump's hair in the early 2000s, we can see how naturally thin it is. It comes as no surprise, then, that as she ventured into political spaces decades later, the sudden emergence of thick, full hair came thanks to a little secret help. That kind of volume doesn't come from nowhere. In a few photos shared on social media, people claim they can see Melania's hair extensions. Hey, it's absolutely nothing to be ashamed of. Loads of people use extensions and wigs to amp up the volume in their hair. 

On December 12, 2024, JD Vance shared a photo to X of Melania and Donald Trump watching TV. It was taken from behind the couple, so the back of Melania's head was in full view. There, hidden in the waves of her hair, was a darker piece of something that many believed to be the adhesive section on hair extensions. 

Ready to ring the bell on the New York Stock Exchange.
President Trump will lead a great American comeback! pic.twitter.com/uH235bxRlD

— JD Vance (@JDVance) December 12, 2024

Again in December 2024, another photo of Melania's hair went viral that seemed to be taken on the same day. It showed something underneath her top layer of hair. "I'm guessing she has extensions," an X user tweeted. "Her hair was not done very well, very frizzy, she probably did it herself and did not check the back well enough." Another wrote, "It looks like extensions [that] overlapped or came un-attached and popped up." So, even as first lady, Melania can suffer hair mistakes. It happens to everyone.