How did British GQ’s 2000 photo shoot with Melania Knauss come to be republished in 2016, and who photographed it?
Executive summary
British GQ republished a risqué January 2000 photo shoot featuring Melania Knauss on its website in March 2016 after "digging through the archives," a decision the magazine and its editor framed as a routine archival repost that quickly became politically charged during the 2016 U.S. campaign [1] [2]. The photographer who shot the original GQ spread was French fashion photographer Antoine Verglas, who has publicly described shooting the session aboard Donald Trump’s private Boeing 727 and discussed the images in interviews [3] [4] [5].
1. How the images resurfaced: GQ’s archives, editorial choice and timing
British GQ says the photos were dug out of its archives and republished online in March 2016, a deliberate editorial action to make a 2000 feature accessible to a contemporary audience; the magazine’s own pages and subsequent interviews with its editor, Dylan Jones, confirm the republication date and that the material came from GQ’s archives [1] [2]. GQ framed the republication as resurfacing a notable magazine feature—one that had been part of its January 2000 coverage of Donald Trump and his then-girlfriend—and the timing coincided with intense public interest in Donald Trump’s campaign, which amplified the images’ reach beyond standard fashion readerships [2] [4].
2. Editorial motive and internal recollections: ‘bombarded by requests’
GQ’s editor at the time, Dylan Jones, has said the magazine had been "bombarded by requests to shoot Melania," and that the 2000 story arose from that publicity moment; Jones and GQ have positioned the 2016 republication as an archival reissue rather than a newly commissioned shoot, though they acknowledge the images’ renewed political resonance [1] [4]. That editorial framing—and Jones’s recollection about why the original shoot happened—explains why GQ presented the images again in 2016, but reporting makes clear the republication itself was an editorial decision tied to GQ’s control of its archives [1] [2].
3. Who photographed the shoot: Antoine Verglas’s role and recollections
French photographer Antoine Verglas is consistently identified in the reporting as the photographer behind the 2000 GQ spread; Verglas has described the session publicly, saying he shot Melania Knauss aboard Donald Trump’s customized Boeing 727 and recounting details about the concept and location of the shoot [3] [4] [5]. Multiple outlets and interviews attribute the images to Verglas and quote him discussing his work with Melania around that period, making his authorship the established fact in the contemporary coverage [3] [4].
4. The republication’s aftermath: politics, memes and fact-checking
When British GQ republished the images in March 2016 they were rapidly circulated and recontextualized during the 2016 campaign; outlets reported that the photos subsequently became part of online memes and political sparring, and later fact-checking and reporting sought to clarify origins and correct misattributions—such as later erroneous claims linking the photos to other aircraft—while reaffirming that the GQ spread dated to 2000 and was shot by Verglas [6] [2] [3]. GQ and other media noted the images’ renewed visibility altered their public meaning compared with their original fashion-magazine context [2] [4].
5. What reporting does and does not establish
Reporting makes clear that British GQ republished the 2000 shoot online in March 2016 after revisiting its archives and that Antoine Verglas photographed the original session aboard Trump’s 727; those are documented facts in GQ’s own reporting and interviews with Verglas and GQ’s editor [1] [3] [4]. Public reporting links the republication to the 2016 campaign’s heightened interest in anything connected to the candidate, but sources differ on motive beyond routine archival posting, and the available reporting does not provide internal GQ editorial memos or broader corporate directives that would prove a strategic political purpose beyond the editor’s public statements [2] [1] [4].