Bündchen, Gisele

Gisele Bündchen, in full Gisele Caroline Bündchen, (born July 20, 1980, Horizontina, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil), Brazilian model who first gained fame in the late 1990s and who later became a “supermodel,” perhaps best known as a face of the American lingerie, clothing, and beauty retailer Victoria’s Secret.

Bündchen was raised in the city of Horizontina—a small rural town in southern Brazil—with her five sisters, one of whom is her fraternal twin. Bündchen’s father was employed as a university teacher, and her mother worked as a bank clerk.

In 1994, at age 14, Bündchen was spotted in a shopping mall by a modeling agent for Elite Model Management, one of the largest modeling agencies in the world. In 1995 she entered the agency’s Look of the Year modeling contest (later renamed Elite Model Look), in which she placed second nationally and fourth globally. The following year Bündchen moved to New York City to launch a professional modeling career and soon thereafter made her runway debut at New York Fashion Week—one of the industry’s four major semiannual events. In 1997 Bündchen appeared on the cover of the Brazilian edition of the leading fashion magazine Vogue (October), gaining industry recognition. Despite a more curvaceous figure that stood in stark contrast to the waifish frames then in style, Bündchen continued to appear on the covers of the industry’s leading publications. She appeared in 1999 on the cover of American Vogue (July), which proclaimed the “Return of the Sexy Model,” thereby marking the end of the then popular and controversial look known as “heroin chic”—an extremely thin physique paired with pale skin, dark undereye circles, and often disheveled hair and clothing. In the same year, she was named Model of the Year, an honour jointly awarded by Vogue and the American cable-television network VH1.

Gisele Bündchen

In 2000 Bündchen signed a contract to become a face of Victoria’s Secret (2000–07) and began dating Hollywood actor Leonardo DiCaprio, quickly gaining international notoriety. She soon became a household name, which many in the industry heralded as the return of the “supermodel”—a top fashion model who appears simultaneously on the covers of the world’s leading fashion magazines and is globally recognized by first name only. During this time Bündchen also walked the runways of some of the world’s top fashion houses, including Christian Dior and Valentino; in 2015 she retired from runway modeling.

Bündchen made her film debut in the comedic thriller Taxi (2004), starring Jimmy Fallon and Queen Latifah. Two years later she starred alongside Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway in the film adaptation of Lauren Weisberger’s best-selling novel The Devil Wears Prada (2004), an account of the comic travails of one of the personal assistants of the fictional fashion-magazine editor Miranda Priestly.

In 2009 Bündchen married the American football player Tom Brady. In the same year, she was appointed Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations Environment Programme. Bündchen was featured in the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibition “The Model as Muse: Embodying Fashion” (2009), which showcased the models who epitomized fashion during the 20th century. She launched several product lines, including footwear, clothing, jewelry, lingerie, and environmentally friendly skin care. Bündchen also founded the Luz Foundation, which strives to empower young women both mentally and physically through its sponsorship of various self-esteem-building programs. In 2018 she published Lessons: My Path to a Meaningful Life.