SHY AND MIGHTY
Demure sex symbol Claudia Schiffer reflects on three decades in the spotlight and her catwalk comeback
I N the span of her 30-year career, Claudia Schiffer has appeared on more than 1,000 magazine covers, launched countless campaigns and served as muse for the likes of designer Karl Lagerfeld and photographer Mario Testino.
But if Schiffer, 47, had to start modeling now, she doubts she’d make it.
“I’m quite a shy, private person,” she tells The Post. “The new generation, nowadays, they don’t have a filter — they can just share, and [they] share anything at any moment, and I find it quite hard to share more than just certain things. So if I had to do that in the ’90s, I think I would have failed!”
But being bashful has paid off for the blond babe who became the most in-demand cover girl in the ’90s and is now having a renaissance. The German supermodel returned to the runway after more than a decade last month in a surprise appearance alongside fellow ’90s “supes” Naomi Campbell, Cindy
Crawford, Helena Christensen and Carla Bruni at the Versace show in Milan, and has just launched a high-end shoe collection with Aquazurra and beauty line with Artdeco. She also has a new coffee-table book out from Rizzoli that offers a look back at her days as a young model, channeling Brigitte Bardot in Guess campaigns and starring in sultry magazine spreads, often with the same handful of fellow models.
Schiffer was “discovered” in a Düsseldorf, Germany, nightclub at 17, and quickly shot to supermodel stardom, walking in shows and booking campaigns with the likes of Campbell and Crawford, who both contributed to Schiffer’s book.
“It really became like seeing your friends every day because there were only a small group of girls who walked in all the shows and competed for the big jobs, so you went to work knowing who you would probably see that day,” she says.
Schiffer and her model friends would even pick their jobs based on who else was working. “We would call each other and say, ‘I’m up for this campaign, but I’m only going to be in it if you’re in it, too,’ ” she says.
The close network protected the models, too, from uncomfortable situations — a precursor to the movement against industry harassment that’s bubbled up in recent weeks. “I’d call the other girls and say, ‘Don’t work with this photographer. He was not very nice,’ or ‘Don’t walk in this show — they have copied everything from Versace and Chanel,’ ” she says.
The vibe backstage is very different in 2017, now that models such as Bella and Gigi Hadid and Kendall Jenner — with their millions of online fans — rule the roost.
“It’s much quieter now,” she says. “In those days, everyone was chatting, shouting to each other as we were in hair and makeup, but now models are mostly looking down at their phones.”
Schiffer doesn’t shun social media entirely. To get ideas flowing for her book, she says, “I started doing a lot of Pinterest boards of my favorite pictures [of myself ], and also my favorite pictures which are within photography.”
But don’t head to her Instagram for sexy bikini shots or cryptic captions. Instead, she uses the medium for sharing snaps from events and her various fashion and beauty gigs. Backstage at the Versace show in Milan, she ’grammed a pic of herself and Crawford with their hair up in rollers — “our first selfie together,” she wrote — and a video of her supermodel squad strutting down the runway, holding hands.
She knew that walk would be a big moment (they all stayed in different hotels to avoid spoiling the surprise) and cherished the chance to hang out with her friends again, wearing monogrammed getting-ready robes.
“For us, it’s great looking back, having this moment again together,” she says. “[It was] so much fun.”