Claudia Schiffer became one of the original supermodels after she was discovered in 1987.
She's since worked with all of the best designers and photographers, but in the early 2000s
she suddenly took a step back from the spotlight.
Let's find out what she's up to.
Schiffer decided to end her catwalk career in 2002, shortly before tying the knot with
British movie producer and director Matthew Vaughn.
It was her love for her husband that inspired her to change her focus from career to family.
She told The Guardian in 2005,
"I used to work every single day and travel round the world.
I worked weekends, I never took one second off.
When I met my husband I said, 'You know what, this is important.
I'm not going to work weekends any more.'"
To hear Schiffer tell it, Vaughn turned her entire world upside down.
She gushed to The Guardian,
"I just thought, oh, there's no perfect man out there.
Then I met him.
He had everything I wanted in a man.
He completely swept me off my feet."
He also inspired her to try new things.
When Marie Claire asked her when she knew she was in love, she responded,
"The moment I started to love Marmite, which I had always hated, after Matthew made me
try it again.
Only love can do this."
On May 26, 2002, the couple said "I do."
They now have three kids together and are set to celebrate their 18th anniversary in
2020.
Schiffer may have thought she downsized her fashion career for good, but following her
2017 return to the catwalk, she's once again become one of the hottest models in the biz.
As the Star Tribune proclaimed in a March 2020 headline,
"Veteran fashion models are back in style."
And it all started with the Versace Spring 2018 show.
As Schiffer told Vogue backstage,
"I did my last show 15 years ago for Yves Saint Laurent, his farewell show in Paris.
[At the time I thought], this is the last time, now onto the new generation, I'm never
going to do this again."
But then Donatella Versace invited her to walk in the Spring 2018 presentation, and
everything changed.
Since then, Schiffer has returned to gracing magazines.
In 2019, she appeared on the cover of Vogue Italia for the first time in 25 years, and
then she landed on Vogue Russia's January 2020 cover.
Her Instagram account is closely followed by fashionistas, and she's inspiring the next
generation of stars.
At the 2020 Oscars, Margot Robbie paid tribute to the fashion icon by wearing a gown that
was similar to a dress that Schiffer wore on a runway in 1994.
As a fashion industry veteran, it should come as no surprise that Schiffer has tried her
hand at designing.
In 2017, she teamed up with Artdeco Cosmetics to launch Claudia Schiffer Makeup, which featured
essentials like lipstick, eye shadow, and foundation.
At the same time, Schiffer unveiled a second partnership, this time with Aquazzura, which
consisted of eight unique shoe designs.
The capsule collection was unveiled during Paris Fashion Week.
Schiffer told Footwear News,
"Every shoe is inspired by something in my time or in my life, whether it's a school
run or a red carpet event."
The experience was so great that Schiffer and Aquazzura teamed up again in 2018.
This time, she looked into her archives for inspiration.
She told Footwear News,
"I pulled them all out.
I loved the slouchiness in boots in the '80s.
The '90s was more about the buckle.
I also love all the leopard and tiger prints.
These bring back a lot of memories for me."
Schiffer clearly enjoyed her time dreaming up makeup and shoes, as she's continued to
be active in the design game.
In 2020, she unveiled not one but two design projects with two legendary Portuguese manufacturers.
The first was a collection of three glass vases created with Vista Alegre, while the
second included five butterfly-themed tableware pieces from Bordallo Pinheiro.
Speaking about her inspiration, Schiffer told Architectural Digest,
"Growing up near the Rhine in Germany, surrounded by countryside, I often drew inspiration from
nature, like butterflies.
With this in mind, when I developed the vases, I chose naturalistic colors that really explored
that sense of bringing nature into the home."
The collaborations all started with Schiffer just being a fan.
She told Architectural Digest,
"I was given my first Bordallo Pinheiro piece years ago by my Portuguese friends...I've
since collected nearly everything Bordallo has made, and I decided to confess my love
and ask them to bring my ideas to life.
The collaboration with Vista Alegre then followed on naturally from this."
2017 marked Schiffer's 30th modeling anniversary.
To celebrate, she teamed up with esteemed publisher Rizzoli to release a 272-page coffee
table book, aptly titled Claudia Schiffer.
The book, which features a collection of her most iconic photographs, actually started
out as a Pinterest board.
As Schiffer told Vanity Fair,
"It became the best [images], and then the best of the best, and then the best of the
best of the best."
In addition to highlighting stunning photos that defined her career, Schiffer also used
the opportunity to open up about herself and debunk a few misconceptions, like her reputation
as an "ice queen."
Speaking with InStyle, she explained,
"On photo shoots, there's a lot of people, and because I'm shy, I wouldn't be the one
participating in the conversation.
People would assume, 'She's an ice queen' or 'She doesn't want to hang out with us.'"
She added,
"I think people misunderstood me, and then when I would open up and say, 'Actually, I'm
really shy' they'd be like, 'Oh, yeah.
That makes so much sense.'"
According to Schiffer, the only time she's not shy is when she's in front of the camera.
As she noted,
"I can be outrageous and very chatty and bubbly.
But as soon as [I'm] me again, I would step out of that."
"I also have a sense of humor."
Schiffer and Matthew Vaughn are extremely protective parents to their three kids: Caspar
Matthew, who was born in 2003, Clementine Poppy, who showed up in 2004, and Cosima Violet,
who arrived in 2010.
The couple made a decision to move to a new home to keep the kids out of the limelight.
As Schiffer told Vogue in 2017,
"We used to live in London, and when [my kids] started school, there was a lot of attention
and paparazzi at the gates.
We decided to move to the countryside, where they can have a kind of normal life.
We are trying to keep them away from everything for as long as possible until they, one day,
voice what they want to do."
If that something happens to be modeling, Schiffer will be there to help.
When the German newspaper Bild asked her if she'd allow her daughters to follow in her
footsteps, she said,
"If she really wants to do it, I would support her because I only had positive experiences.
I would help her to find the right agent.
But I would prefer that she wouldn't start too young but at 17."
Schiffer shared a similar sentiment with InStyle when she noted,
"I will encourage whatever they want to do, as long as they try their best and work hard
at it.
Having me as their mum is a double-edged sword when it comes to modeling: It may get them
through the door, but they will be under far more scrutiny on the other side."
Age is just a number, especially when you're Claudia Schiffer.
She proved just that in 2019, when, at 48 years old, she decided to pose for a series
of risque, headline-grabbing Vogue Italia covers.
She and fellow 90s supermodel Stephanie Seymour were invited to take their own photos for
the magazine and were merely supervised by photographer Collier Schorr, who gave them
full control over the shoot.
For Schiffer, that meant wearing nothing more than a black Yves Saint Laurent suit jacket
in one snap and strategically placing a bag and heels to cover herself in the other.
Schiffer later gushed about the finished product on Instagram by looking back at some earlier
risque photos of herself and declaring,
"25 years after my first [Vogue cover], the connection I felt with [Schorr] transported
me back to the [Richard] Avedon days."
Here's something you don't hear every day: Claudia Schiffer was turned down...by a 90s
boy band.
This factoid was revealed by Irish pop group Westlife on a November 2019 interview of the
British talk show This Morning, when band member Nicky Byrne admitted,
"You know, Mark has just informed us of something that I never knew, that when we shot 'Uptown
Girl,' that Claudia Schiffer was in the video, and she invited us for lunch, and we turned
her down!"
"What?!"
Fellow band member Mark Feehily explained further,
"Basically, we were doing the shoot with Claudia Schiffer, and it was fantastic, we were all
massive fans, and she was going for lunch halfway through the shoot.
And she was like, 'Oh, you should come with me and have some lunch,' or whatever, and
the label were like, 'No, sorry, you can't do [it], we've got some interviews to do.'"
He added with a laugh,
"So we basically turned down going for lunch with her, and I still hold that against them,
obviously."
It's been more than three decades since Schiffer started modeling, and she's witnessed the
industry change by leaps and bounds, but not necessarily for the better.
As she told the New York Post in 2017, she doesn't think she would've made it big if
she were starting out today.
As she explained,
"I'm quite a shy, private person.
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!"
Schiffer also confessed to Vogue,
"I'm so glad, I must say, that digital wasn't a part of our careers in the '90s...To make
a difference and have people remember you [today], you have to do much more than the
fashion shoots and show."
The industry has also gotten much larger and more competitive.
It's a sentiment Schiffer shared when she was CNN Style's guest editor in 2018.
Regarding the 80s and 90s, she reminisced,
"I look back on this time as a golden age for fashion.
This was a time before digital, where shoots could last weeks and actors or musicians were
not the face of brands, it was us: the supermodels, the photographers, and the designers."
"Are you, are you like a huge celebrity in your hometown?
Are people very excited when you come back?"
"Yeah, I guess so."
She may not be modeling full-time anymore, but as of 2020, Schiffer has managed to maintain
an impressive net worth of $60 million, according to CelebrityNetWorth.com.
That's thanks to a smart and varied mix of endorsements, collaborations, and side projects.
She's endorsed mega brands like Pepsi and Citroën, designed everything from vases to
makeup, and even appeared in a number of movies.
In fact, her minute-long cameo in 2003's Love Actually may have been one of her best-paying
gigs ever.
According to the book How Much?!: The $1000 Omelette...and 1100 Other Astonishing Money
Moments, Schiffer was paid a whopping 200,000 pounds, or about $250,000, for the job.
Since marrying Matthew Vaughn, she's also dabbled in production, including an executive
producer credit on the Oscar-winning Elton John biopic Rocketman.
But Schiffer's riches could've been even greater, as she has turned down some potentially big
paydays.
In 2014, she revealed to British talk show host Jonathan Ross that she's received some
eyebrow-raising offers over the years.
The strangest by far was from an Arab prince, who asked if he could hire her for a dinner
for a million pounds.
She declined, and some other supermodel took the gig.
However, before she turned it down, she did at least consider it, and asked if she could
bring security guards along with her.
"'Could one of them maybe be a female security guard in my room?'
And then they were like, 'Eh, no.'"
"Wow.
You had a tunnel."
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