The 51-year-old German supermodel, who calls herself “Helga” at home, has scaled the dizzying heights of fashion – and remained refreshingly down-to-earth.
The 51-year-old German supermodel, who calls herself “Helga” at home, has scaled the dizzying heights of fashion – and remained refreshingly down-to-earth.
This story is part of the February 23 edition of Sunday Life.See all 14 stories.
I’m Heidi on the catwalk and nicknamed Helga at home. Helga is less cute and fluffy than Heidi, but both Heidi and Helga wear suspenders.”
Heidi Klum is a blast. She’s an international star, the Victoria’s Secret Angel with the hazel eyes and blonde mane who lives in Los Angeles, hosts America’s Got Talent, and before that Project Runway, and throws the most notorious Halloween party in the world.
But she’s also a down-to-earth 51-year-old German mother of four who is wholesome and uncomplicated. She arrives five minutes before her interview wearing very little make-up, is happy to talk about everything, and stirs two sugars into her coffee without any apparent concerns about her weight.
She’s wearing a grey T-shirt, jeans, gold jewellery and red cowboy boots and her trademark fringe is scraped back. “This is a little dowdy for me,” she says, oblivious to the waiters all competing to serve her. “I liked being called Heidi after an adorable mountain girl in a red dress, but I’m also Helga, the practical one, ‘You vant me to milk ze cow?’ ” she says, mimicking her German roots.
Klum may possibly be the most successful of all the supermodels. Worth an estimated $240 million, she’s now more mogul than mannequin, hosting TV shows, running her own line of Heidi Klum Intimates lingerie, swimwear and perfume. She’s appeared on more than 150 magazine covers and done commercials for McDonald’s and Volkswagen, but she doesn’t seem to take herself too seriously.
She laughs. “I’m still very German. I have my dirndls, which I wear to the Coachella festival.” Her German rock-star husband, Tom Kaulitz — a bearded hipster 17 years younger — evidently loves them. “I eat sausages all the time and sauerkraut and pickles, even in LA. I make potato salad, schnitzel and goulash for the children. I’d like to set up a kebab shop near my house. And white asparagus. I love it more than anything,” she says.
“I’m also on time, which is very German. At work I’m very correct, straightforward and organised, but I’m super-messy at home. I’m a hoarder, so that’s a slight problem. I love flea markets and I’m always looking for things that belonged to me in the past. They talk to me.” Klum finally pauses for breath. It’s not going to be difficult to convince this celebrity to open up.
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Does Klum have any idea who she was in previous incarnations? “I have always been men before –this is my first time as a woman,” she says emphatically. “When I was 16, I had my future read and the astrologer said to me, ‘Millions of people will listen to what you have to say.’ ” She now has 12 million Instagram followers. “But I hadn’t even thought of being a model then or hosting Halloween parties. I just used to dream of having a big family, with a big house and garden, dogs and lots of kids. I’m lucky — I’ve got it all now.”
Klum really does appear to have cracked it. But the girl from a village outside Cologne, whose mother, Erna, was a hairdresser, and father, Gunther, a cosmetics company executive, believes her life might have been very different if she hadn’t entered a modelling contest when bored as an 18-year-old. She beat 30,000 other contestants.
It’s easy to see why the German audience adored the teenager with the golden hair and huge smile. But when she arrived in Paris, people were less impressed. “They thought, ‘What is she doing here? She is too healthy and happy.’ I was told I was fat. I was tiny, even thinner than now. But the fashion world is obsessed with weight. The only person who has ever said to me, ‘You would look better with a little more weight,’ was my husband. He loves women and he wanted more curves and more meat on my bones.”
She didn’t have many offers to walk the catwalk during fashion weeks in the early ’90s. “I went for endless castings. Only a few asked me to try on their sample clothes and I just didn’t fit into them. I was 90-60-90cm. The clothes would get stuck on my breasts or my hips. Instead, I did a lot of catalogues, which was fine – I made money. I bought my first apartment, my second apartment, a house for my parents, my brother and my grandmother.”
It wasn’t until Klum was asked to do Sports Illustrated in 1998 that she entered the ranks of the Supers. Her cover sold 20 million copies. “The magazine was on the stands, at the dentist, everywhere. Overnight, I’d walk down the street and people would swivel. Men had tattoos of me on them. It was crazy. At the same time, I became a Victoria’s Secret Angel. The attention became insane, but I wasn’t going to complain.”
This is not a woman who looks like she will retire anytime soon. “Maybe I work too hard. I never felt I was as gorgeous as some of the others around me, so I had to work extra long [hours]. I couldn’t say, ‘I have a plane to catch, I’m off.’ ”
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She’s so uncomplicated, I’m beginning to understand why Klum says she has never felt the need to have therapy. “I wouldn’t be against it. I’d be bored talking about myself every week, I think. I don’t take drugs. I smoked a while ago, but I don’t vape. I drink mostly decaf, I’m very high energy as it is.” She looks insanely fit. Does she lift weights, do Pilates or yoga, or all three?
She starts to laugh. “Sport en chambre is my favourite exercise – it sounds better in French. I have a younger husband. I also run around a lot, having four kids. I don’t have an assistant, so I don’t have people pack for me or carry my things, I do everything myself. I eat right, I never exercise too much or do heavy weights. People can push themselves too hard. I listen to my body. I have no back or knee pain and I have my husband.” She smiles at me. So sex is good? “Very good. My husband is my match.”
Her children, now in their teens and early 20s, have grown up with their mother all over the internet. “They’ve never known it any other way. They’ve always seen me on TV, posters, in ads … They have phones, it’s a safety thing, but they also see the gossip. There are images of my face on other people’s bodies doing stuff. It’s not nice. They know about pretty much everything that’s out there, but we talk a lot. I think that is all you can do. For my part, I don’t want to be uptight. With my boys I’m like, be kind, have condoms, don’t make me a grandmother yet.”
Her eldest daughter, Leni, has become a model and they’ve recently modelled for the Italian Intimissimi underwear brand together in matching lacy thongs. “My daughter is so nonchalant. For me, the cameras had to become my friends. I had to learn that it’s just a person clicking away, capturing what you give: you play with the lens, not the person. She’s more of a tomboy – she won’t wear my clothes. My younger daughter thinks she wants to be president. She likes politics.”
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Singing is another of her talents, and she’s rapped with Snoop Dogg, but she’s possibly best known now for her Halloween balls. “I love musicians. I’ve been married to two, and it was fun singing with Snoop Dogg, but what I still like most is dressing up.” Her costumes have become legendary, from an ape to a skinned corpse on an autopsy table and a worm. “There was no cool party in New York for Halloween, which always upset me. It was so lame, so I thought I would dress up a lot so people can get that vibe. Every year, I try to make something more fabulous. Once I learnt how to walk on stilts; [in 2023] I was a peacock and trained with Cirque du Soleil. I start thinking about it the day after the last one.”
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In her 20s and 30s, Klum felt she was working too hard and going to bed too early to party much. Now that the children are older and she has more time, she wishes everyone partied more. “It’s getting boring. I am taking dance classes with my husband. We started with the rumba. I’d love to open a club one day.”
Where would she like to be at 80? “I would like to be in a miniskirt – fallopian length – somewhere having a good time with my husband, children and grandkids.”
I can see it now. Heidi is so sunny and optimistic, it’s hard to remain cynical in her company. “I do worry about world issues: the escalating wars, the American elections, the German far right,” she says. “But fashion should lighten everything. I’m here to let you switch off, sit in front of the TV, flick through photos, buy a lacy bra and relax.”
We’re still chatting two hours later. Klum has finished the biscuits while telling me how to make a pompom and where to buy a red coat like hers for a fraction of the price. She suddenly realises she has another fitting in an hour. “I’m so sorry, I have to go,” the supermodel says. “Please don’t think me rude.” I get up to settle the bill. She’s already paid. Klum knows her worth, but she’s made it her own way by being the hard-working, fun-loving, easygoing girl next door.
The Times (UK)
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