Helen of Troy may have had the face that launched a thousand ships, but Claudia Schiffer had, and still has, the face that launched a thousand ad campaigns.
Turning 48 tomorrow, Schiffer’s path to supermodel stardom started when a modeling scout picked her out of the crowd at a Dusseldorf disco when she was 17.
Six months later after she graduated high school and moved to Paris, Schiffer made the first of many appearances on the cover of Elle magazine.
The 5’11” bombshell went on to get high-profile jobs with Guess? Jeans, Chanel, and Revlon and by the mid-’90s, she was one of the most popular and sought-after models in the world.
The first model to make the cover of Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, The New York Times, and People, Schiffer also became the first model to gain the distinction of being called “magically babelicious” in a major motion picture.
(Note: This clip also includes the first documented usage of “that’s what she said.”)
Though she gets no credit for that appearance on her IMDB page, the actual Schiffer went on to appear in more than a dozen Hollywood films including Zoolander, Friends and Lovers, and Love Actually.
Now, after more than 30 years in the biz, Schiffer is still active and looking great. But, according to her, if she was 17 again and just starting out, she wouldn’t make it in the modeling world of today.
“I’m quite a shy, private person,” she told The New York Post. “The new generation, nowadays, they don’t have a filter — they can just share and 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!”
All due respect to Ms. Schiffer but we’d have to disagree based on the contents of her Instagram account, which includes current photos as well as classic shots.
Take a look … you’re gonna be on our side on this one. Schwing.
Of course, Schiffer also looked great in her heyday and she knows it, sometimes sharing throwback pictures of herself from years and ad campaigns past.
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