Sevnica

Sevnica is a town on the left bank of the Sava River in central Slovenia. The old town of Sevnica lies beneath Sevnica Castle, which is perched on top of Castle Hill, while the new part of town stretches along the plain among the hills up the Sava Valley, forming another town core at the confluence of the Sevnična and Sava rivers. The main industries in Sevnica are Kopitarna, a shoe factory that used to produce shoe trees (Kopita in Slovenian), Lisca lingerie, Tanin Sevnica, various traditional food industries and wineries. In the past, tourism wasn’t an important economical aspect for the town. Recently though, thanks to the surrounding nature, they have begun to promote sport tourism.

Melanija Knavs, as she was called before she became Melania Trump, grew up in Sevnica when Slovenia was part of Tito’s Yugoslavia. Her parents, Viktor and Amalija, were a car dealer and textile factory pattern cutter respectively. Mr and Mrs Knavs still own a house in Sevnica, as it happens; but these days, like their daughter, they live in America. Through the US elections Melania Trump became the First Lady and people from all over the world learned about her hometown Sevnica.

In order to develop a tourism based on the image of Melania Trump the town hall together with its citizens decided to promote the traditional local products of Sevnica and branding them with the First Lady logo. Each citizen and merchant of the town developed a personal way to show the american side of their small village. For as much as everyone had to develop a positive, negative or neutral opinion on Donald Trump the town remains a calm and quiet countryside village with it’s typical syncretism of communist residuals, folkloristic catholicism and the american capitalistic dream.