Claudia Schiffer on her 50th birthday: “I never …

The supermodel will be 50 years old on August 25th. As the muse of Karl Lagerfeld, Schiffer once advanced to become the best-paid model in the world. She is currently making a comeback.

A few weeks ago she was right at the front again: on the cover of “Elle”. Claudia Schiffer is currently experiencing a comeback. Many magazines these days remember the supermodel and her colleagues Naomi Campbell, Linda Evangelista or Cindy Crawford, who not only got rich and famous in the 90s, but also shaped an era. “La Schiffer” will be 50 years old on August 25th.

“I am happy to be 50 and have never felt happier and happier in my life,” Schiffer told the British Telegraph. Despite all the competition, there was a camaraderie between the top models at the time, she says. If there were grievances at work, they talked about it and warned the others.

Discovered in the night club

The student Claudia actually wanted to follow her father, study law and become a lawyer. But then she was discovered by the head of a Parisian model agency in the “Checkers” nightclub on Düsseldorf’s Königsallee. A certain Heidi Klum also worked in the club at times.

Schiffer later reported that she went from Rheinberg on the left Lower Rhine to Paris full of self-doubt. It was only when her face was emblazoned on the billboards of the metropolis that it dawned on her that she could become a usable model after all. But she is still shy.

A steep climb up the career ladder

Today her fortune is estimated at around 200 million euros. She owns a listed property from the 16th century near London and a townhouse in London’s posh Notting Hill district. She and her husband, film producer Matthew Vaughn, have three children: Caspar, Clementine and Cosima.

Looking back, she realized what a special time the 1990s were, she recalls. Photo models had gone from being pushed around temporary workers to coveted icons of the luxury industry, who earned immense sums of money with advertising contracts. Claudia Schiffer’s meteoric rise began in 1987. The German blonde reminded many French of Brigitte Bardot. As the muse of Karl Lagerfeld, she became the best-paid model in the world.

“I will be forever grateful to him,” wrote “la Schiffer” on the death of Lagerfeld last year. He signed her to Chanel in 1988. That Lagerfeld had publicly dismissed her as “yesterday’s apparition” in 1996 was forgiven. Lagerfeld taught her everything about fashion, style and how to survive in the fashion industry, Schiffer wrote.

Schiffer became a brand himself. The cover girl of the glossy magazines was popular with the best photographers in the world for her versatility and her Prussian discipline: she could stage the innocence of the country just as well as the man-murdering vamp and the luxury diva. While her colleagues were celebrating boozy parties after the fashion shows in Paris, the boatmen had long been on the plane for the next shoot.

“CEO of their own body”

She was the “CEO of her own body”, wrote the “Stern” once. For years she only knew her private life from hearsay and therefore never learned to cook, she said in retrospect. But the changeable beauty was able to retire from the catwalk in 1998 at the age of 28. Claudia Schiffer can now be seen regularly on museum walls: on pictures in exhibitions by the famous photographers for whom she was a model – Peter Lindbergh, Mario Testino, Gunter Sachs, Ellen von Unwerth, Helmut Newton.

Only on television did the cool beauty from Rheinberg always fall short of the other world-famous beauty: the quick-witted Heidi Klum. In 2013 Schiffer made the last TV attempt so far, but ProSieben canceled their show “Fashion Hero” after only one season with disappointing ratings.

Popular influencer

The public does not have to do without Schiffer: For some time now, as an influencer, she has been sharing her seemingly flawless life with her 1.3 million followers on Instagram. Mostly she wears jeans.

In the coming year you will get to know Claudia Schiffer in a new role: as curator of a photography show. In the Kunstpalast in Düsseldorf she wants to present a journey back in time to the era that shaped her like no other: the fashion world of the 1990s.

(WHAT / dpa)

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