Gisele Bndchen: a model life?
January 14, 2020For more than a decade, Gisele Bndchen was the worlds highest-paid supermodel. But it hasnt always been so simple. She talks about anxiety and hitting rock bottom, ethical activism and surviving Twitter storms
In the grand exhibition space of a Shanghai art museum, molecular blobs have been blown up on to giant screens to demonstrate the science element of a very long, very reverent summit on skincare hosted by Dior. The celebrity element is Gisele Bndchen, the face of a new range of creams and serums, who will shortly be on hand to help quantify how 30 years of advanced floral science and stem cell technology can help you look better. Being born looking like one of the most successful models of the century can also help, but no matter.
Health is becoming the new wealth, announces Edouard Mauvais-Jarvis, Diors scientific communications director, to a room of 150 or so delegates. Gentle electronic music pulsates in a space with a Kubrick-meets-Instagram aesthetic: clinically all white, all bright, accented by pillars of pink peonies. Chic French PRs circle beauty journalists, editors and scientists, while kooky Asian influencers, like kooky influencers everywhere, take aloof but cute selfies.
Bndchen or Gisele, as shes mononymously known bounds on stage after being introduced via video montages of her career and the new Dior beauty campaign. There are lingering, soft-focus shots of her sitting with her eyes closed on a mountain or looking wistful on a beach, set to soaring strings. The emphasis is on the models credentials as an environmentalist, activist, mother and paragon of physical perfection. Dressed in flared blue jeans, white shirt tucked into a Christian Dior belt underneath a myrtle green blazer with black kitten heels, her trademark wavy blow-out bounces as she takes a seat.
Im a big believer in your body being a temple, she says. Her voice is a deliciously Brazilian-accented husk. She has been put in conversation on stage with Chinese actress Li Bingbing and a local TV presenter to talk about personal wellbeing and the planet. What are we eating? What are our thoughts? Gisele asks the audience. Because when you feel better, you look better. And if we hurt nature, were hurting ourselves.
Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/us