“I have a very happy childhood here. I have great relationship with my parents. They’re very modern, very open. My sister and brothers are really great as well. In one point in my life I wanted to become a lawyer like my father because I was very impressed by what he was doing. I was helping out on the weekend in his offices with my sister together and once awhile I went with him to court to watch him work in court and I was so impressed that I wanted to become a lawyer and do the same thing as him.”

Born on August 25, 1970 in a small town of Rheinberg, Germany, Claudia Schiffer never dreamed of becoming a model, let alone the face of a major fashion house or an icon of a generation. Aspiring to be like her prominent attorney father and guided by a loving homemaker mother, Claudia, the eldest of four children, had an incredibly happy childhood and had close bonds with her siblings. Those intangibles of happiness and family would help mold Claudia into the amazing woman she would become:

But much to the surprise of Claudia and her family, fate would have a totally different path for 17 year old Schiffer when the self described shy and awkward teen was discovered in a Düsseldorf nightclub by then visiting modeling scout and founder of METROPOLITAN models agency Michel Levaton. “I was very shy: when someone came to visit us at home, I always hid behind a curtain … And I was so tall and slender that I had a lot of complexes at school: for fear of attracting attention, I always sat in the last row.”

At first Claudia’s parents rejected the idea outright of their daughter pursuing a modeling career but after several meetings with agents and some persuading, Claudia’s parents began to come around: “They were very supportive and said basically, ‘You decide, if you want to do it, we’re totally behind you.’ Even my mother came with me in the beginning and helped me out going around Paris because I came from a small town. I didn’t know how the subway station worked. I didn’t know how to go around Paris, how to do all these things.”

But Claudia’s modeling aspiration were almost short lived as she was rejected time after time while trying to adjust to a life in Paris: “At first it was difficult. I was surrounded by more and more people, everything was new. I didn’t have time to make friends. And I didn’t even know if I was going to be successful. Plus, I didn’t speak French and English well: I didn’t understand everything I was told, but I was too shy to ask for explanations. My salvation was the moments in front of the mirror, for the make-up. It was like a protection, my armor.”

With Claudia’s dogged determination in the face of rejection and acquired new confidence from practicing in the mirror, Schiffer struck big with her first major cover for the October, 1989 issue of ELLE, shot by Gilles Bensimon: “ELLE Magazine, I was lucky, they liked me very much, so they started working with me, I had my first cover with them. That gave me a chance to be seen by other fashion editors, or designers, or photographers, and slowly from there I started to work with everybody else.

Claudia learned to eventually overcome her shyness by utilizing those moments in the mirror to transform herself into a confident, brave, and determined woman during shoots: “Few thought I would make it. But while they were putting on my make-up, I told myself that from that moment on no one would ever see me blush again. And in fact I always managed to show perfect control of myself.”

Still unaware of her superstar status, the international modeling sensation’s career would forever be changed when Claudia caught the eye of legendary fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld, handpicking her to walk in his spring Chanel Haute Couture show in 1990. Claudia never even walked a fashion show and admittedly never wanted to walk one, but after much convincing from Karl, Claudia tried her hand at the runway:

By 1992, Claudia Schiffer was a global modeling juggernaut as she graced countless fashion magazine covers (8 for Vogue alone in the same year), editorials, campaigns, became the face for GUESS and Chanel. Then in 1992, Claudia signed at the time, one of the biggest beauty cosmetic contracts as the face of Revlon for three years and $10,000,000 USD. With models like Claudia boasting this type of unheard earning power and fashion designers like Gianni Versace driving art and pop culture, the age of the SUPERMODEL was cemented:

As the supermodel phenomenon was coming to a close by the late 1990s, Claudia Schiffer realizing how much the fashion industry and media influenced the perception of body image to girls and woman, voiced her concerns over the trend of heroin chic and anorexia:

“I don’t like very much either that the fashion trend right now is the women or girls are supposed to be very thin which could be very dangerous to all the young women and girls that are reading all the fashion magazines and following every fashion trend. So I think it’s dangerous if they copy everything, they might copy also wanting to be so thin which can lead into anorexia and that’s very dangerous.”

In 2001, Claudia married film director Matthew Vaughn. Throughout the 2000s, Claudia would become the face of Spanish clothing company Mango, reunited with Karl Lagerfeld and Chanel, become the the face of Alberta Ferretti’s signature fragrance, starred in campaigns for Louis Vuitton, Salvatore Ferragamo, and Yves Saint Laurent, while kicking off her own Cashmere collection in Paris.

With a modeling career spanning over 30 years, Claudia has done what very few could dream of. Claudia Schiffer at the age of 25, according to The New York Times, was a modeling miniconglomerate generating millions of dollars a year as the world’s best-paid supermodel, the face of iconic and world renowned fashion brands like GUESS and Chanel, landing record-breaking cosmetic contracts, and according to the Guinness Book of World Records, she holds the record as the model with the most magazine covers, totaling over 1,000!

From a shy German teen to an iconic supermodeling sensation, Claudia Schiffer transcended the expectations many had for her. From the onset, Claudia’s small town charm, authenticity, and warmth is what captivated people the world over the most. The 90s were filled with tragic stars riddled with demons, taken way before their time. Yet Claudia’s star was never too big for the brightest of lights. Celebrity and megalomania might be a constant today, but the notion of a super like Claudia was much more meaningful and it’s something that forever changed fashion:

“This is why I remain passionate about the fashion industry 30 years later. Fashion and beauty in their purest sense can be empowering tools, almost like armor. They can enable you to define and re-define yourself or let a specific attribute shine. More than that, sometimes we need help to find our purpose, to persevere beyond the self-doubt and be who we were meant to be.”