I got burned,” admits Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, a glossy, groomed, Upper East Side Icarus. "But I did it for all the right reasons - it was an opportunity to make a difference."
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Unfortunately, the sun she flew too close to was the gaudy, garish, gold-plated glow of Donald Trump, his glamorous, inscrutable wife, Melania, and the hubris and hoopla of the court that surrounds them. But, unlike that of Greek mythology's winged son, Winston Wolkoff's weakness was not ambition, she insists. "My Achilles' heel is my loyalty," she says, with an earnest self-regard that only Americans or people in fashion can ever truly muster (Winston Wolkoff happens to be both).
Our first full month in the White House was like living inside an emotional washing machine that only made you feel dirtier with every rinse. Even though I believed we'd come out ahead, it felt like I was being dragged down. I missed my family. I missed my old life.
I had never been a secret special advisor in the White House before. Melania had never been First Lady before. Since Melania was still living in New York, she wasn't even a full-time First Lady yet. Our team of Lindsay, Rickie, Tim, Emily, Vanessa, Stephanie Grisham, Mary-Kate, David Monn, and I was a motley crew. Every single thing we did or didn't do was under the media microscope.
Even if Melania didn't do anything, it made news. On January 30, 2017, the front page of the Washington Post “Style” section dubbed her “the AWOL First Lady.” After speaking with Melania, I emailed Reince Priebus and Katie Walsh, attaching the article, and said, “I understand that we have hiring restrictions but when it comes at the detriment of the First Lady (see below) it is not something we can ignore. . We have an incredibly qualified Communications Director [Jessica Boulanger,] who is eager to begin but we need budget approval. We do not need a lot of staff, but we do need qualified staff.”