Fifteen years ago, when Heidi Klum left Victoria’s Secret, she made a declaration that sounded like surrender: models have a “sell-by date.” It was interpreted as resignation—a beautiful woman gracefully accepting obsolescence. But Klum wasn’t lamenting. She had already planned her exit strategy, built the bureaucratic structure of her next phase, and understood something consequential: trends fade, but recognisability endures.
Cut to September 2025, and Klum is closing the Vivienne Westwood SS26 show—the first time closing at Paris Fashion Week in her 33 year-long career—a corset cinched high over a body that, according to fashion’s old maths, should have been retired a decade ago. This is the central paradox of Heidi Klum, and the guiding thread of her entire career: she has built a multi-million-dollar empire at the heart of the global fashion industry by being its structural opposite. Fashion prizes opacity; Klum is famously, exhaustively visible. Fashion demands tragedy or humility from its survivors; Klum is corporate, aggressively upbeat, and unwilling to age into melancholy.
Coat SPORTMAX Shoes CHRISTIAN LOUBOUTIN ARCHIVE
For Klum, candour comes naturally. Growing up in Bergisch Gladbach, Germany, her parents—a hairdresser and a cosmetics executive (turned manager)—were proponents of FKK (Freikörperkultur), or free body culture. This meant family holidays where nudity was simply the default—a freeing, pragmatic form of recreation, not a shameful performance. “I spend my life either naked or in underwear,” she laughs on set—shooting between shows during September’s Paris Fashion Week. For Klum, the body is a vehicle, not a scandal. This is the root of the confidence that allows her to be the woman who dictates the terms of her own visibility. It’s a deep-seated German confidence—a refusal to equate the body with embarrassment— that the high-fashion world often confuses for too much commercial ease.
She can be the global fashion arbiter who hosts Germany’s Next Topmodel and also the kind of person who, on a recent, luxury holiday in St. Bart’s with her husband (Tom Kaulitz of Tokio Hotel,) cheerfully admitted to skipping the detox for fresh bread and beer. (You can take the girl out of Germany, but you can’t take Germany out of the girl.) She can be the Queen of Halloween, the face of Lederhosenand Dirndl-wearing HeidiFest, and, simultaneously, a judge on a decade-spanning reality TV machine. Her ambition was always creative: “I wanted to be a designer when I finished school,” she says. And that desire became a kind of constant pursuit. It powered collaborations with her father on perfume; inspired her to be one of the first to approach the Birkenstock family about making their orthopedic shoes fashionable; and led her into capsule collections with Babies“R”Us and New Balance. She views every product—from makeup to lingerie to a track suit—as a thing she personally needed, then built.
Bodysuit XULY.BËT Glasses TOM FORD EYEWEAR
This product philosophy mirrors her origin story: rooted in the democratic, tangible world of mass appeal, not the fantasy of high fashion. Klum’s career was no downtown discovery; it began with a televised contest, Model ‘92—already then blurring the line between celebrity and commerce. She was the German teenager with the sun-drenched, American smile, who would just as soon do a commercial for McDonald’s or Volkswagen as a Sports Illustrated cover. When Karl Lagerfeld dismissed her as too “commercial,” he wasn’t wrong, but he was missing the point. Klum was a new kind of celebrity: the accessible, mass-market talent whose very survival would, ultimately, prove more relevant than any abstract editorial concept.
The sophisticated engine beneath Klum’s blonde continuity is a relentless, almost aggressive work ethic. She is, first and foremost, the CEO of her own persistence. When Sharon Osbourne left America’s Got Talent, Klum didn’t wait for a publicist to pitch her; she simply found the necessary contacts and went to introduce herself, saying she’d love the job. Similarly, after a Tiësto concert in LA, she accosted the musician to pitch him the idea for a cover of Corey Hart’s ‘Sunglasses at Night’—a track they laid down soon after.
Full look MSGM
This is the Klum machine: a refusal to cede control, or opportunity. She turned the sell-by date into a production schedule, the backstage camera into a brand identity. A decisive pragmatist, she ran her personal affairs with the same hands-on intensity, detailing how she managed her multi-million-dollar finances early in her career: doing her own taxes with a sheet bought from Staples. She is the producer of her own calendars, her own lingerie lines, and, now, the co-producer of the documentary about her business.
The cheerful self-assertion—as reality hostess, judge, and self-curator—is the infrastructure of her survival. And yet, for all the strategy, there’s something disarmingly simple about her durability. She still laughs loudly, drinks Bavarian beer from a Maß, and approaches nudity with the casual ease of someone raised without shame. She’s never claimed to be mysterious, only present. And after three decades, that joyful, unembarrassed, relentlessly visible presence is her most enduring form of rebellion. Fashion may finally be catching up to Heidi Klum, but she’s already somewhere else: still working, still smiling, and still operating under the simple, self-evident truth that recognisability is the highest form of permanence.
Coat, shoes and tights GUCCI Underwear STYLIST’S OWN
INDIE: So lovely to chat again, Heidi. The whole team had such a great time on set. You and [INDIE photographer] Teresa seemed to have a great connection.
HEIDI KLUM: I loved her very much. She just knows what she’s doing.
INDIE: What else is important for to you to feel comfortable on set?
HK: That’s pretty much it—the light and someone who knows the angles. Even if I don’t get along with a photographer, I can still make it work. I’ve fought with people on set. I’ve had people want to make me cry—but I still stand my ground. I’m not gonna let anyone ruin my day or my shoot—I just won’t work with that person again afterwards. That happens rarely. But in this case, she was so lovely that it almost became more intimate and more raw. When you have someone who looks at you in a different way through the lens—maybe because she’s a woman… I just felt like she wanted to get the best out of me, my best angles. Sometimes it’s more sensual, even though we’re taking very modern photos, and I’m raw. I’m not “Hollywood Heidi.” I felt closer with her than I do with other photographers, even though I don’t know her that well. That’s why I immediately told my team, I would love to work with her again, even have her on my show, especially for the nude shoot on Germany’s Next Topmodel, which we do once a year.
INDIE: I can imagine it’s rare to find that intimacy at a shoot with 100 people watching.
HK: I block them out. People don’t bother me. What bothers me sometimes is everyone getting their phone out and filming from the sidelines. Like when the skirt is not closing and your butt cheeks are hanging out, and then you have someone who’s filming you around the corner and you were not aware. And then you turn around. It’s like, ‘excuse me?’ Sometimes people just do those types of rude things. I don’t love that.
Coat SPORTMAX Shoes CHRISTIAN LOUBOUTIN ARCHIVE
INDIE: This Fashion Week you were accompanied by a film crew working on a documentary about your professional life, surely adding to the frenzy of being captured and filmed 24/7.
HK: They don’t film me 24/7. It’s not like a reality documentary in the sense that I let anyone come into my home or film me going to bed. It’s really about the business. I’ve been in it for 30 years, and my son [Henry] now for one year, [my daughter] Leni for five years. For people who are interested in this industry, it’s interesting for people to see the different jobs that we do. Some we do together—Leni and I shoot Intimissimi together, and Henry for YSL. It’s interesting to see how you put things together, how you act in front of the camera.
INDIE: How does it feel to share that with your children?
HK: My kids have watched me being in this industry their whole lives. That’s why they’re not very camera shy. They see the camera the way I see the camera, which is more of a friend. When I’m shooting Topmodel, many of the models are fearful in front of the crew. They kind of get shell-shocked because they haven’t done it. But my kids have been around it their entire lives. It was natural for them to go into this, even though I never thought they were actually interested in doing it. I was surprised when Leni, at 14, said she wanted to do this. I said, let’s at least wait until you are 16. [John] Rankin [Waddell], one of my closest friends, had shot her when she was younger, they just weren’t published. And then she got started. Henry, a little bit later at 19, surprised me too. I can’t get a good family photo, they just don’t all want to look forward or make a nice face. But now, all of a sudden, they all become little models, and it’s so fun.
INDIE: You once described Project Runway as your “first child”—is there a lesson from motherhood you apply to mentoring designers?
HK: From the beginning, I’ve always tried to be kind to people. I never want to make someone cry or run off the runway on Project Runway, or on America’s Got Talent, or on Topmodel. I never want to hurt someone at the core, in their soul. I don’t say things for shock value. I’ve sat next to people who do that because they know it will air, or because sarcasm and not being nice was a trend for some people… not to name any names. But I was never like that. Even when I say something negative, I try to give productive criticism, or wrap it up in a nice package with a bow on top, so that when they go, they don’t want to hop out of a window or feel bad about themselves. I don’t see the point. They already have to leave, so why hammer it in harder?
Coat SPORTMAX Shirt and tie MIU MIU ARCHIVE Shoes CHRISTIAN LOUBOUTIN ARCHIVE
INDIE: As our Miss December: are there German traditions at Christmas you particularly love or celebrate?
HK: I hang mistletoe over the bed so I can kiss my husband under it. When my kids were younger, I would make Advent calendars for them. I would get all these little different things, instead of just buying one in the store, I would make 24 gifts that I would wrap up. I’ve done that for my husband in the past too. On the 24th we wear matching pyjamas, with little red hats with our names on them. On the 25th we dress up for photos in front of the Christmas tree. When you look back through the years you see everyone in little suits or dresses, hair done. If you don’t make those moments, everyone just hangs out in jeans and sweats. It’s about creating a moment and making an effort.
INDIE: What’s the best gift you ever received?
HK: Oh, I have an entire staircase hallway dedicated to my kids’ art. I probably have 100 paintings that they’ve made for me. And the really amazing ones are framed behind glass. Because I have a lot of art. I have a big house. But I always wanted their paintings to be just as important as a Schnabel, or Sterling Ruby, or someone fabulous who’s expensive, so that they understand their art is just as valuable to me.
When the fire comes close to my house, those are the first things that I’m putting in the U-Haul truck. Everything else doesn’t really matter. You’re not gonna remember the sweater, the socks, or even a pretty ring you got (unless it’s the engagement ring that I got from my husband Christmas morning!) But all the other things just go away. The older you get, those things you forget. But what you don’t forget are the things that someone made for you, or the holidays you spent together, the meals you made together, the trips you went on together. Those are the things that will always live on.
INDIE: Do you make New Year’s resolutions?
HK: No. I’m 52 now, and I know it doesn’t work for me. I used to say, ‘okay, January 1 I’ll exercise more, drink more water.’ And then, well… no. For me it doesn’t do anything. I like to be with the people I love on New Year’s, to go into the year together. But otherwise, I think every day should be treated as the new year. Let’s drink more water today, let’s not wait.
INDIE: Is there something on your bucket list for 2026?
HK: To shoot an action movie!
INDIE: Wow, can you tell us more?
HK: No… but that’s a good cliffhanger, right?
Shirt MM6 MAISON MARGIELA Tights CALZEDONIA Rings HEIDI’S OWN Glasses TOM FORD EYEWEAR
Photography TERESA CIOCIA
Styling RACHAEL RODGERS
Talent HEIDI KLUM
Art Direction DALIAH SPIEGEL
Creative Consultant MICHAEL SPÄTH
Hair LORENZO MARTIN at THE WALL GROUP
Make-up LINDA LAY at AIRE NYC
Set Design TOAR AVNI
Production JULIUS SALVENMOSER at SERVICES UNITED
Local Production EMMA BALL-GREENE
Talent Team MONA FENINA, JENNIFER LOVE, SEBASTIAN BUCHINGER
Photography Assistants LOUIS HEADLAM, TYRA GALIEVA
Styling Assistants STELLA RASCHKE, SANYA BATRA
