For me, though, there was no contest. As I sat watching Gisele Bundchen’s 5ft 11in frame of toned Brazilian-bombshell flesh navigate the booths of a bar on Manhattan’s West Side, it was obvious both Victoria’s Secret and Time had got it wrong. Gisele — tanned, curvy, sensual — is really The Body. Sure, Macpherson’s curves are the best of any 40+ out there, and Klum is faring exceptionally well for a mother of three (remember when she wore barely-there panties at a Victoria’s Secret runway show mere weeks after the birth of number two?). Nevertheless, it’s the athletic and busty body before me that has kept fashion enraptured for the past decade. Gisele was the one anointed “ the model of the millennium” by Anna Wintour, who blamed her for “the return of the sexy girl”.
Gisele was born in the southern Brazilian village of Horizontina, and her body was originally destined not for the runway (which she hardly does any more — she leaves that to “those new girls”), but for the volleyball court. That’s until a New York scout stumbled upon her eating a Big Mac at a shopping mall in Rio. Since then, she’s worked with nearly every photographer of note (although she now says: “Today, I only want to work with people I like — I don’t need to prove myself”) and appeared in the biggest fashion magazines in the world. She’s also dabbled in film, as a bikini-clad bank-robber in Taxi, and has her own line of footwear, Ipanema, in Brazil.
The highest-paid model on the Forbes list of celebrities (six spots above Kate Moss), 26-year-old Gisele (like Kate and Naomi before her, and nobody since, she needs only her first name) spends most of her time now in Brazil, riding and surfing. “She doesn’t really need any of this any more,” a casting agent in New York tells me. “That girl just cashes her cheques and heads down south.” And who wouldn’t, with a reported $25m deal from Victoria’s Secret?
Judging by today’s outfit (jeans, hoodie, trainers), it’s still not fashion but volleyball on her mind. Volleyball — and boys. She has reportedly dropped the American surf stud Kelly Slater and been spotted canoodling with the Fantastic Four star Chris Evans. About her love life, though, the super is saying nothing. Was she or was she not engaged to a Brazilian polo-player? Is she or isn’t she dating Leonardo DiCaprio again? One minute, he’s squirrelling away an Israeli Gisele lookie-likey named Bar Rafaeli (who, according to the tabloids, is banned from any Victoria’s Secret appearances per a Bundchen dictum), the next the real Gisele is frolicking on a beach in Malibu with Leo’s mum and puppy. All she’ll tell me is that her only companion is a Yorkshire terrier called Vida. “I’m in a great place,” she says, sitting across from me, her perfectly symmetrical face and pouty lips demanding attention, “where I can do what I want.” And today, what she wants to do is talk about Red, Bono’s economic initiative targeting Africa.
As the new face of the Red American Express card (you’ve probably seen her on a billboard, draped, laughing, over a Masai warrior), she says that of all the trends that have littered her career, from D&G corset dresses to Balenciaga motorcycle bags, this is the one she’s most proud of. “Making charity trendy?” she asks. “That’s what I’d like to do with this.” Posing in the sand dunes of India for Louis Vuitton, lying about in Renaissance palazzos for Dolce & Gabbana, writhing around in soap suds for Dior: Gisele has seen her fair share of props and production. But shooting the Red Amex campaign with the photographer Nick Knight is, she says, the most memorable. “This picture is real. There was a moment when we loosened up and we were hanging out and laughing, and that’s when it worked.”
The campaign is, according to Gisele, the only reason she came out of a season of retirement. “I had decided I wasn’t going to do anything,” she says. “But this was so great, the whole idea. I was like, ‘I have to do this.’”
Since Red was first launched with Bono and Scarlett Johansson in Style back in February, the campaign has been gathering pace. What seized everyone’s attention at the launch was that Red and its co-operating labels (Gap, Emporio Armani, Converse, American Express) weren’t soliciting handouts. They were asking people to buy things they wanted, then bask in the satisfaction of knowing that a percentage of their purchases helped someone along the way. “It’s so smart,” Gisele says. “You’re going to do it anyway, you’re going to go shopping. But now you can buy something and help someone else at the same time.” Each brand donates money from every purchase to the Global Fund, which in turn uses the money to fight TB, Aids and other diseases in Africa. “Red is often mistakenly referred to as a charity,” says a spokesman. “This is not the case. Red is not a charity or a campaign, it is an economic initiative that aims to deliver a sustainable flow of money.”
“The important thing here is that it’s happy,” Gisele continues, exaggeratedly waving her impossibly long, toned arms for emphasis. “I had a conversation with Bono about this, and what we need to remember is that Red is bold, it’s strong, it’s powerful. When you say Africa, people think, ‘Feel sorry for me.’ Red is a different approach. We want it to be a positive thing. We want everything to be up.”
Whereas most African charities focus on the continent’s suffering (“I don’t think the pictures of people looking miserable work any more,” Gisele says), Red wants to highlight its survival. And it wants to encourage consumers to pick Red the next time they find themselves in front of a till or looking for a new T-shirt. “So you’re going to buy a phone? Or a shirt? Or a pair of shoes?” asks Bobby Shriver, Bono’s business partner and co-founder of Red. “Well, buy the Red phone, buy the Red shoes and use the Red card. If you do, we’re going to buy the medicine and people are going to stay alive.”
Since February, Red (which is is a mostly European initiative, and has yet to launch in America) has raised more than £5m for the Global Fund, of which more than £2.5m has already been allocated. Motorola has hopped on board with a new phone, the hip furniture firm Established & Sons has just announced that it will manufacture a Red chair; Emporio Armani has upped its Red offerings from a pair of sunglasses to a capsule collection; Converse continues its collaboration with Giles Deacon on mudcloth Chuck Taylor trainers; and Gap is bumping up its Red wares from one unisex T-shirt to a 70-piece collection including parkas, jeans, jackets and accessories. Mostly, though, Red and its attendant brands want you all to go shopping. Hence Gisele. “She has that whole ‘I’m young, I’m fun, I’m 6ft tall and I date movie stars’ quality,” Shriver says. He points to the Masai warrior in the campaign: “Look at this guy: happy, strong, fun and fabulous.”
No stranger to a nation in crisis — growing up in a small town in Brazil and witnessing first-hand the poverty and the country’s own Aids epidemic — Gisele didn’t need much persuading from Bono (who has no shame in using his own Motorola Red mobile to call in favours from his showbiz friends). Like every other celebrity who has worked with Bono, her accolades are gushing. “I take my hat off to the man,” she says, pulling her black cap down over her eyes in an effort to deflect some unwanted attention. “I’m a big fan of his, I’m a big fan of his heart.” But what the two of them are doing, in Gisele’s words, “is helping people help”. And in the most basic way: by shopping. “I come from a house of seven women,” Gisele says of her mother and five sisters, “and I can’t wait to buy that Red T-shirt for all of them. If I have five credit cards in my wallet, for sure I’m going to use the Red one. For sure. By buying a Red dress, using the Red card, you’re embracing this beautiful thing.”
Then, flashing the cheek-cramping megawatt smile she learnt from her new Masai friend, Gisele makes her most convincing plea. “We can all start shopping more, and feel good about it. No more guilt!”
