Gisele Bundchen

Gisele Caroline Nonnenmacher Bündchen (born July 20, 1980) is a Brazilian supermodel. She is recognized as being one of the most successful and the highest-paid model in the world. Since her introduction to the fashion scene in the 1990s, she has appeared on many billboards and magazine covers, as well as numerous TV and print ads. Bündchen is currently the face of more than 20 brands worldwide from countries including the United States, Russia, Brazil, Italy, France, Mexico, Spain, Turkey, South Korea, Germany and Switzerland. According to Forbes, she earned $33 million in 2006, adding to her estimated $150 million fortune. She is currently listed in the Guinness World Records as the "world's richest supermodel".

Originally, Gisele 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 course, instructed by Dilson Stein, was designed for teenagers aspiring to become models. The following year, Stein took Bündchen, along with some other girls to São Paulo to give them an opportunity to walk in a big city and to be evaluated by Brazilian Elite agents. 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.

Gisele's 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 was the fourth model in history to grace the cover of Rolling Stone magazine, when she was named "the most beautiful girl in the world".

Since her debut, she has been the face of a variety of advertising campaigns including several seasons of Christian Dior, Balenciaga, Dolce & Gabbana, Missoni, Versace, Céline, Givenchy, Bvlgari, Lanvin, Guerlain, Valentino, Ralph Lauren, Earl Jean, Zara, Chloé, Michael Kors, Louis Vuitton, and Victoria's Secret. Bündchen is also the face of several Brazilian brands like Vivo (Brazil's leading mobile company), Multiplan, Colcci and Credicard. She appeared in the Nivea lotion ads. After C&A Brazil hired her and started their television commercials, sales increased by 30%.

In May of 2006, Bündchen signed another multi-million dollar deal, this time with American giant Apple Computer. She starred in an advertising campaign to promote the new Macintosh line through the Get a Mac advertisements. She has her own line of sandals with footwear company Grendene called Ipanema Gisele Bündchen. Forbes puts her 53rd on their list of the most powerful celebrities of 2007 due to the success of her shoe line. Custom Ipanema flip-flops sell for as much as $230 a pair She is also the owner of a hotel in the south of Brazil, the Palladium Executive.

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

Bündchen has been on the covers of most of the main fashion magazines including W, Harper's Bazaar, ELLE, Allure, on many of the 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 broader market publications such as Time, Vanity Fair, Forbes, Newsweek, Veja, totaling almost 500 magazine covers throughout the world.

On May 1, 2007, it was announced that Bündchen had ended her contract with Victoria's Secret. The New York Post's Page Six reported that Bundchen had left Victoria's Secret because she just wanted to move on, not because she didn't get paid enough.

In July of 2007, earning an estimated total of $33 million in the past 12 months, Forbes magazine named her the world's top-earning model in the list of the World's 15 Top-Earning Supermodels.

According to Claudia Schiffer: "Supermodels, like we once were, don't exist any more." and reckons that Gisele Bundchen is the only one who comes close to earning the supermodel title.