Celebrity
Supermodel Gisele Tearfully Recalls When She Had To Model A B**B-Baring Outfit
“I hope my dad doesn’t ever see this picture.”
Brazilian supermodel Gisele Bündchen opened up about one of the most traumatizing moments in her modeling life in the latest British Vogue interview. At the age of 18, she was “crying” when she found out she had to wear revealing underwear for Alexander McQueen’s outfits on the runway in 1998.
Now 41 with two children, the 18-year-old when she finally made her big break at the London Fashion Week.
She recalled that she struggled to find a designer willing to put their clothes on her because she did fit the “heroin chic” character that was the trend back then. “I didn’t speak English,” she recalled.
Gisele went to 42 castings and “nobody would even look at my book” because she didn’t fit the image in their mind. “But I went to this casting for Alexander McQueen and there were girls around the block.”
“I didn’t have a fitting, so when I showed up at the show, I was like, ‘What am I wearing?'”
Now a fluent English-speaking supermodel married to NFL superstar Tom Brady, she recalled how she’d pretended to understand what was said to her and said “yeah” to everything.
“It was this, so I started crying,” Gisele continued.
She was walking in McQueen’s silver chain underwear that doesn’t cover her top properly and while she was wearing it, Gisele remember sobbing and crying while getting her makeup done.
“I had these feathers attached to my lashes so as I was crying they were ungluing and the makeup artist was like, ‘Please don’t cry!'” she remembered. “I was walking the whole time thinking, ‘I hope my dad doesn’t ever see this picture.'”
“That’s why I have the memory of this show.”
Her debut had almost made her “run away” because she then had to wear another skirt and walked the runway topless. She wrote in her 2019 memoir, Lessons: My Path to a Meaningful Life that she was crying so much her makeup artist Val decided to paint her a white shirt to make her feel better.
“Val told me how beautiful it looked and said that the runway was so dark nobody would know. If Val hadn’t shown up then, I seriously doubt I could have walked the runway,” she recalled.
She downplayed her fashion sense and joked about wearing “Birkenstocks with socks.”
While she’s now confident about her body and modeling for underwear and bikinis, it wasn’t the case when she first started out as one of Victoria’s angels.
She signed with Victoria’s Secret in 2000 and was worried that it’d ruin her career.
Her career skyrocketed, but she was constantly worried about having her body overly exposed on the runway.
During her last walk for Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show in 2005, the supermodel was insistent about not letting her back shown. She said, “I always made sure that my back was covered because it just made me uncomfortable walking on a runway with my butt hanging out [with people] looking up [at me].”
“I was like, that’s not going to happen. But I always had fun on the shows, it was always a production.”
Gisele also told the Independent that she felt more and more uncomfy when brands ask her to be revealing, “For the first five years, I felt comfortable modeling in lingerie, but as time went on, I felt less and less at ease being photographed walking the runway wearing just a bikini or a thong.”
“Give me a tail, a cape, wings—please, anything to cover me up a little!”
But she was offered “more money that I’ve made in entire career since I was 14” at the time and she decided to sign with the lingerie brand, thinking “maybe I would never do fashion again because it was this thing.”
“So I was like, you know what, they’re paying me great, they’re paying me more money than I could ever imagine. So I think I’m going to say yes to it. But I have to take the risk. So I signed it and… everything worked out!”
Speaking to British Vogue, Gisele also revealed that she had to deal with anxiety and hit “rock bottom” in her 20s.
“From the outside, it looked like I had everything and I was just 22 years old. On the inside, I felt as if I’d hit rock bottom, I was starting my day with a mocha Frappuccino with whipped cream and three cigarettes, then drinking a bottle of wine every night,” she recounted her daily routine.
“Imagine what that was doing to my mind…” she trailed off and continued that she finally sought help from a naturopath.
As she recovers from her withdrawal symptoms, she began establishing a healthier lifestyle, waking up at 5 am to meditate and work out.
