Gisele Bündchen Says Walking Alexander McQueen’s Runway Was ‘Traumatizing’ In New Interview

While Gisele Bündchen is now one of the most iconic supermodels of our time, the Brazilian fashion icon explained in a new interview with British Vogue that even she once doubted whether modeling was for her when starting out. Bündchen, 41, sat down with the publication to reflect on a number of outfits she donned throughout her career as part of its “Life in Looks” video series. This segment included one ensemble from the 1998 Alexander McQueen fashion show that Bündchen remembered feeling humiliated by and recalled shedding tears over.

“This was one of the most traumatizing moments,” she said while looking at a page with a photo of herself at 18 wearing a revealing, silver shredded shirt while braless. “I mean, I didn’t speak English. It was my first show season in London. I did 42 castings.” She explained feeling out of place as the ‘heroin chic’ look was in at the time and her figure didn’t match what many scouts were after. “I remember going to all these castings and nobody would even look at my book because it was the heroin chic time and I didn’t look nothing like the heroin chic, obviously, as you can see in the picture,” she added.

Bündchen said that she ended up booking the McQueen show, feeling confused after being among “a thousand girls” at the casting call. Without any prior fittings, she revealed that she had no idea what she would be modeling that day. “I, I could say like a few words but I didn’t understand half the things,” she said. “I just pretended I understood. And I was like, ‘Is it a T-shirt or something?’ No, it was this. So I started crying.”

She recalled feeling so upset and overwhelmed that her feathered lashes kept becoming unglued from her tears, and her makeup artist told her to stop crying. Ultimately, as Bündchen recalled, she ended up pulling herself together but felt scared as she walked down the runway thinking, ‘I hope my dad doesn’t ever see this picture.'” She continued, “That’s why I have the memory of this show […] all I wanted to do was leave but you know, it’s one of those things that make you stronger.”

During the same interview, the legend also remembered suffering from “crippling anxiety and panic attacks” at the very beginning of her modeling career. “From the outside, it looked like I had everything and I was just 22 years old,” she said. “On the inside, I felt as if I’d hit rock bottom, I was starting my day with a mocha Frappuccino with whipped cream and three cigarettes, then drinking a bottle of wine every night. Imagine what that was doing to my mind.” She appeared to feel much prouder of how far she has come years later as she looked back through her notable outfits, and her fans couldn’t be more appreciative of her “honesty” and “vulnerability,” as some wrote on Twitter soon after her video was uploaded.