Gisele Caroline Bündchen, born 20 July 1980 is a Brazilian fashion model and occasional film actress. She is the goodwill ambassador for the United Nations Environment Programme. In the late 1990s, Bündchen became the first in a wave of Brazilian models to find international success. In 1999, Vogue magazine dubbed her “The Return of the Sexy Model” and she was credited with ending the “heroin chic” era of modeling. Bündchen was one of Victoria’s Secret Angels from 2000 until mid-2007. Since 2004, she has been the highest-paid model in the world and the sixteenth richest woman in the entertainment industry (as of 2007) with an estimated $150 million fortune.
Models Claudia Schiffer and Naomi Campbell have stated that Bündchen is the only true remaining “supermodel” and according to Forbes she may become the world’s first ever billionaire supermodel. In June 2011, Forbes magazine estimated that Bundchen’s total earnings over the last 10 years have passed the $250 million mark. As an occasional actress, she had supporting roles in Taxi (2004) and The Devil Wears Prada (2006). From 2000 to 2005, Bündchen was in a much-publicized relationship with American actor Leonardo DiCaprio. She married New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady in 2009.
Gisele Bündchen whirls through her West Village brownstone — a tornado in skinny black jeans, tank top, filmy cardigan, and hausfrau slippers. Devoid of makeup, her mane of tawny hair slightly mussed, she speaks in a rapid-fire, throaty Brazilian accent. “I’m a very hyper person,” she says, rummaging through imaginary piles of clutter in her sparely decorated home away from home. (She splits her time among New York, Los Angeles, and Boston, where she lives with Tom Brady.) Indeed, while the 28-year-old could easily rest on her laurels given her enormous supermodular success, stillness just isn’t part of her repertoire.
Though Gisele clocks in at nearly six feet and has a bod that stops traffic (but is a mere size 4), it’s the one-two punch of her significant physical assets and her wham-bam personality that has not only catapulted her to the top of the modeling world but also kept her firmly at its apex for a decade and counting. “She is even better in the flesh,” says Dior designer John Galliano. “I think it was her first season in Paris when she came to do a fitting. I had heard about Gisele, but when she walked in the room I felt like my fingers had been put into the electrical socket, like, pwoah! Pure electricity.”
“What I love about her is her sensuality and energy,” seconds designer Donatella Versace. “Gisele is one of a kind.”
In her ascendancy after the waif era, Gisele recalled the supermodels of the early ‘90s: Cindy Crawford, Naomi Campbell, Christy Turlington, Linda Evangelista, and Tatjana Patitz. Of course, Gisele doesn’t think of herself as a supermodel at all. “I really don’t feel like that word. It doesn’t resonate for me. It doesn’t define me,” she says, hands flapping about as she reclines on a linen-covered overstuffed sofa. “As long as I’m a good person and I do things from the heart, that’s all that matters.”
“Tom is a good guy,” she continues tentatively. “He has a very pure heart. He’s very naive, almost like a child. That is my favorite quality about him. One thing that I thought was so amazing when I first met him is that he is innocent. He sees the world with colored glasses.” (While Gisele speaks several languages, occasionally some charming malapropisms escape her.) “It’s beautiful, but I think that is rare. I love that about him. No one else sees that. He’s very strong and focused in his job, but he’s so sensitive, it’s amazing.”
Gisele’s earnest approach harkens back to what she proudly admits are her humble beginnings and close-knit family. Raised in Horizontina, Brazil, then a town of about 10,000, she’s one of six girls (one of whom is her fraternal twin).
“There were no traffic lights in my city, no movie theater — one hotel, and one bank,” she says affectionately of her hometown. Her father and mother raised their six daughters while working, respectively, as a teacher and a bank cashier. “We didn’t have a housekeeper, so we all cleaned the house.”
It took her several years to make her mark, and she endured the typical gasp-inducing criticisms that plague most modeling careers. “I’ll never forget the day when a woman came up to me and said, ‘No, you could never be on a magazine cover. Your face features don’t work; your eyes are small, you have a small face but a big nose.’ I was only 14 and I had never noticed any of that stuff, you know?” Luckily, Gisele’s father supplied a snappy comeback for her. “He said to me, ‘Next time that happens, you tell the person that you have a big nose and a big personality to match.’ Ha!”
She also recently took her love life to the next level. Gisele and Brady reportedly walked down the aisle in February in Santa Monica. Designers and close pals Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana designed a strapless ivory confection for her replete with a scalloped hem and a sweeping train.
The bombshell confesses to Bazaar, prior to the media circus, that she’s ready to move into the role of wife and mother. “I want to have a big family,” she says. “My parents have been together for 36 years, and that is what I want. I am in that place. It’s all good in that part of my life. It’s one part of my life that I’m learning about every day. I’ve been challenged a lot by it, but it’s the most rewarding part.”
The challenges presumably date back to the drama surrounding the inception of her relationship with Brady. Just weeks after news of their courtship broke, it was revealed that Brady’s very recent ex, actress Bridget Moynahan, was pregnant with his child. Naturally, Brady and Gisele were trounced by the tabloids, which charted every change in Moynahan’s bump. But Gisele is said to have neutralized the situation by sending a peace-offering gift basket to Moynahan, and she is mad about Brady’s one-year-old son, John Edward. “I love kids,” she says, smiling, her eyes lighting up. “It’s amazing that I have the opportunity to hang out with my stepson all the time.”
She picks up a recent picture of the tot from her shelf, which is lined with photos of family and friends all crowded together in mismatched frames. “He is so kind. He loves blueberries, and every now and then my dog, Vida, tries to get some food from him. He is so nice that he will give her the blueberries first. He is so cute and has such a sweet demeanor.”
There was a time, however, about five or six years ago, when Gisele wasn’t ready for love and marriage and babies. The pace of her career, her lifestyle, and her one-name fame were getting the best of her.
She also became an avid reader of self-help books, and their truisms are part of her everyday vernacular. “If you are happy, you can give happiness,” she says with all sincerity. “If you don’t love yourself and if you are unhappy with yourself, you can’t give anything else but that.”
For Bazaar, Gisele interpreted a host of famous muses through the ages. She clearly relates to those models who share her physicality and strong sexuality. Of Veruschka, she says, “She knew how to move and had a really strong face. Not too perfect, but gorgeous, and she made it look effortless.” So too did Gisele, who transformed herself, with the help of a power hair-and-makeup team led by Jimmy Paul and Pati Dubroff, into Veruschka, Lauren Hutton, Jerry Hall, Penelope Tree, Brooke Shields — and, of course, herself. She did everything from primping her hair (“This looks great,” she said of her cover look, “but it’s too glamorous, too chic. It needs to be more bitchy!”) to moving the heavy industrial lights around the set, Bionic Woman–style.
Of Lauren Hutton, Gisele says, “She’s one of my favorite people in the industry. I don’t know anyone who is more authentic than her. She’s not just beautiful, she’s got a soul.” And Jerry Hall? “I always think of her as Jessica Rabbit. She’s sexy, she’s beautiful, but very doll-like — very perfect features but with big hair like Rapunzel.”
The androgyny central to Penelope Tree’s persona is more difficult for her. “She looked like she was hiding, like she was shy. She gave the minimum and didn’t open herself up. There was a distance, but maybe that was the era; maybe that’s how women felt.” As for Shields, she observes that the 1981 Calvin Klein ad (shot by Richard Avedon the year after Gisele was born) is one of her favorite pictures ever. “She looks so innocent, but she is doing sexy poses. Her face says one thing, but her body says something else.”
In front of the camera, Gisele is something else too. “She brought sexy back way before Justin Timberlake,” says Galliano. Gabbana and Dolce, ever fond of a power femme, add, “We love her attitude. She’s self-confident, conscious of her beauty, independent. She is what a woman should be.”
After a long day of shooting, Gisele was also a woman who was ready to go. She stood at the mirror scraping the layers of makeup off her face, tearing off fake lashes, patting down her teased-up hair, and lamenting her irritated skin, worked over for the multiple transformations. “I haven’t seen Tom in 10 days and now I’m going to show up like this?” she wailed. But of course Gisele, red face and all, is still Gisele.
website: www.giselebundchen.com
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