About Gisele Bundchen

Gisele Caroline Bündchen (born July 20, 1980) is a Brazilian model and occasional actress. According to Forbes, she is the highest-paid model in the world and also the sixteenth richest woman in the entertainment world, having earned $33 million in 2007 and $35 million in 2008 alone, adding to her estimated $150 million fortune. She is also listed on Guinness Book of World Records as the world's richest supermodel. Bündchen has been the face of more than 20 brands internationally, and has appeared on more magazine covers than any other supermodel.

Gisele Bündchen was born in the Brazilian town of Três de Maio and grew up in Horizontina, Rio Grande do Sul, to Vânia Nonnenmacher, a bank clerk pensioner, and Valdir Bündchen, a university teacher and writer. She has five sisters — Raquel, Graziela, Gabriela, Rafaela and her fraternal twin Patrícia, Gisele's junior by five minutes. Bündchen was raised as a Roman Catholic, speaks Portuguese as her native language and English as a second language.

She is from Southern Brazil, a region whose population is largely composed of Brazilians of German descent. Bündchen is of distant German ancestry from both sides of her family: her great-great-grandparents immigrated to Brazil from Germany. In regards to her ethnic background, Bündchen said:
"I was born in Horizontina, a town in the backcountry of (Brazilian) state Rio Grande do Sul. The town was once mainly colonized by Germans. In the school which I attended, learning German was actually obligatory from third grade on. But being out of touch with the language for such a long time, I unfortunately forgot it. [...] I belong to the sixth generation of my family in Brazil."

Originally, Bündchen wanted to be a professional volleyball player and considered playing for the Brazilian team, Sogipa. While in school, Bündchen was so thin that her friends used to call her "Olívia Palito" (Portuguese for Olive Oyl, Popeye's skinny girlfriend) and "Saracura" (a type of Brazilian shorebird).

In 1993, a then-13-year-old Bündchen joined a modeling course with her sisters Patrícia and Gabriela at her mother's insistence. The following year, Bündchen went to São Paulo on a school excursion to give them an opportunity to walk in a big city. In a shopping mall, while eating a Big Mac with her friends, Bündchen was discovered by a modeling agency. She was subsequently selected for a national contest, Elite Look of the Year, in which she placed second — Claudia Menezes, from Bahia, took first place. Bündchen placed fourth in the world contest, held in Ibiza, Spain. In 1996, Bündchen moved to New York City to begin her modeling career, debuting at Fashion Week.

Her debut on the cover of the July 1999 issue of Vogue magazine, and the accompanying editorial entitled, "The Return of the Sexy Model", is widely viewed as marking the end of the fashion's "heroin chic" era. She graced the cover again in November and December of that year. She won the VH1/Vogue Model of the Year for 1999, and a January 2000 cover gave her the rare honor of three consecutive Vogue covers. In 2000, she became the fourth model to appear on the cover of the music magazine Rolling Stone, when she was named "the most beautiful girl in the world."Bündchen has been on the covers of many top fashion magazines including W, Harper's Bazaar, ELLE, Allure, international editions of Vogue, as well as style and lifestyle publications such as i-D, The Face, Arena, Citizen K, Flair, GQ, Esquire, and Marie Claire. She has also been featured in the Pirelli Calendar 2001 and 2006 as well as in broader market publications such as Time, Vanity Fair, Forbes, Newsweek, and Veja, totaling more than 500 magazine covers throughout the world.

Bündchen consistently works with acclaimed photographers such as Mario Testino, Steven Meisel, Nick Knight, Mert and Marcus, Rankin, Annie Leibovitz, Karl Lagerfeld, Peter Lindbergh, David LaChapelle, Mario Sorrenti, and Patrick Demarchelier, among others, and with renowned directors such as Jean Baptiste Mondino and Bruno Aveillan.

Claudia Schiffer said, "Supermodels, like we once were, don't exist any more" and reckoned that Gisele Bündchen was the only one close to earning the supermodel title.

On August 26, 2008, the New York Daily News, in a list, named Bündchen the fourth-most-powerful person in the fashion world.

Stats

  • Birth name: Gisele Caroline Bündchen
  • Date of birth: July 20 1980
  • Place of birth: Três de Maio, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil
  • Height: 1.80 m; 5'11"
  • Hair color: blonde
  • Eye color: blue
  • Measurements: 36-23.5-35 (91-60-89)
  • Shoe size : 38 EU/7 US/5 UK

(with thanks to Gisele's Wikipedia page.)