For Vogue’s September issue shoot titled “Good Jeans,” Claudia Schiffer made a rather shocking statement. “I’m so shy that I used to not speak all day long,” she revealed. “I’d just stand very calmly in the middle of the storm with everything happening around me.” Bashful has never been a term closely associated with Schiffer, who turns 47 today. She’s one of the original supermodels and undisputed fashion icons of the past several decades, particularly the late ’80s and early ’90s. This was the era in which Schiffer and her band of supers ruled the runways and when Karl Lagerfeld crowned her the official queen of Chanel. She always opened and closed his shows, usually wearing one of his couture wedding dresses or a tweed mini draped in pearls, while strutting and smiling like no one else could—the polar opposite of her self-described introvert personality. Chanel was all about Schiffer in the ’90s. She was Lagerfeld’s muse and he was her mentor, and the clothes, well, let’s just say only she could wear a hot pink terry-cloth bikini top and tracksuit stamped all over with double Cs. Sheepishness be damned.
As the ’90s fashion obsession rages on and Schiffer hits another milestone, we’re taking a look at her fiercest moments on the Chanel runway.