Gisele gives up the catwalk
Brazilian model said she was ‘emptying my cup so I can put more things into it’
G isele Bundchen bid adieu to the catwalk on Wednesday night, strutting her stuff at an emotionally charged show in Sao Paulo that she said will be her last stroll down a runway in a 20-year career that has made her a fashion legend.
The 34-year-old Brazilian mother of two, who is married to NFL quarterback Tom Brady, has said she wants to spend more time with her family but has also vowed to continue working in the industry. Brady was on hand for Bundchen’s final appearance, competing with his wife for the cameras’ attention as he took in the spectacle from the first row.
As the world’s highest-paid model, according to a 2014 ranking by Forbes magazine, Bundchen is the face of Chanel, Carolina Herrera, Pantene and other top brands. She also designs her own line of flip flops and lingerie.
A household name the world over, Bundchen rivals football legend Pele for the status of Brazil’s most internationally famous citizen, and her meteoric rise from a middle-class family in a small, rural town to superstar is the stuff of modelling legend.
In a posting on Wednesday on her Instagram account, Bundchen wrote: “Today after 20 years in the industry, it is a privilege to be doing my last fashion show by choice and yet still be working in other facets of the business.”
“I am grateful that at 14, I was given the opportunity to start this journey,” she wrote.
In an interview broadcast on the Globo television network on Wednesday, she compared her life to a cup of water filled to the brim.
“If your cup is full, how are you going to put more into it?” she said in Portuguese. “I’m emptying my cup so I can put more things into it.”
Bundchen made her final catwalk appearance during Sao Paulo Fashion Week for Colcci, the Brazilian streetwear label she has represented since 2005. She made three appearances, opening the show in an A-line dress in white lace and lacy, knee-high black boots and closing it in a sundress with a full skirt in ivory and salmon stripes.
For the final bow, a bevy of models emerged in jeans and T-shirts printed with Bundchen’s image, and Bundchen herself wove her way through the pack, sporting painted-on jeans and a top Deafter auditioning for 42 shows, Bundchen got her big break with Alexander McQueen’s spring 1998 “rain” ready-to-wear show in London, where she walked in towering heels on a wet, slippery runway in London. McQueen’s dubbing her “The Body” opened doors to some of the biggest fashion houses for Bundchen – including Missoni, Chloé, Dolce & Gabbana, Valentino, Jean Paul Gaultier (pictured left), Gianfranco Ferré, Ralph Lauren, and Versace. She got her first British
Vogue cover the same year and became the most in-demand cover girl of her generation with 10 covers in fewer than four years. The Vogue online encyclopedia of models states, “As the year 2000 approached, Gisele Bundchen was the world’s hottest model, opening up a new category in the popular imagination: the Brazilian bombshell.”