'Talk About My Body All You Want': Heidi Klum (Still) Has Nothing To Hide

Who knew Heidi Klum can sing? Like, on-key-soprano-a capella-Whitney’s-version-of-Chaka-Khan’s-“I’m Every Woman” sing. I know this because last month, as Klum posed for her StyleWatch cover, a busy Los Angeles photo studio suddenly freezes—with one audible gasp—as she breaks into the iconic anthem of female empowerment.

But before I can process that the America’s Got Talent host has, well, some serious talent, she’s already moved onto FaceTiming her daughter Leni. (“I can’t talk, Mom, I’m in a nice restaurant. Love you!”) Wait, now she’s got her glasses on and is behind the camera checking out the pictures of herself. She’s back in front of the camera, whipping her hair around and pouting, 1993-insouciance in full effect. “All the grunge is giving me start-of-my-career vibes,” she says of the ’90s-inspired styling. “Or back to school at 50!” 

The woman—all 5-feet-9-and-1/2 inches of her—moves fast. And, let's be honest, she's always seemed a little superhuman, right? But Klum says her speed "is the Gemini in me. Never comfortable treading in the same spot.” And now, with the symbol of Supergirl and Superman across her chest—she's wearing a sweater dress from Coach featuring the Kryptonian symbol for “hope,” by the way—and a tousle of her bangs, this Supereverywoman is returning to Earth and ready to talk. 

Since being discovered three decades ago in her native Germany, Klum—like her ’90s contemporaries—conquered runways, magazine covers and ad campaigns. But while Linda and Christy earned supermodel status because of their abilities to change their looks, Heidi cemented her iconhood because she could never really shake her Heidi-ness. (She tries every Oct. 31, of course. What Mariah is to Christmas, so is Heidi to Halloween.)

But if you think about it, wherever Klum is, whatever she’s doing—posing, walking, talking, stepping over Carrie Bradshaw on Sex and the City, even, somehow, as a worm (a worm!) — she’s Heidi. Eventually she noticed it too and then leveraged and even bottled herself. She’s created businesses: perfume, jewelry, swimwear. She’s starred (almost always as herself) in TV shows (Project Runway, Making the Cut, Germany’s Next Topmodel, America’s Got Talent).  

Today we stand in the Second Coming of the Supermodel. Linda, Naomi, Cindy, and Christy are back on the cover of Vogue. Kate Moss is back on the runway. But Heidi, she gets to say, “Welcome back, ladies!” Because Klum’s not having any sort of comeback. She never left.  

Making Her Own Runway

Klum did have to forge her own way, she says. Because she was never one of those supes.

“I was never really part of the real big supermodels at the time,” Klum says, of her early ’90s start in fashion. She began modeling after winning a televised model search contest in Germany.  “The designers back then, they were always a little bit like, ‘You’re too commercial; you will never land on a real magazine cover.’” 

Her first cover was Mirabella. At least she thought it was. But after months of waiting for the issue to come out, Klum was surprised when she didn’t recognize the face looking back at her. 

“I was like ‘Who is this girl on the cover? I did the cover, I know I did the cover!’" The magazine had created a collage of several models’  faces. “I was just the cheeks,” says Klum. (Soon after, she nabbed Vogue Paris and has since appeared on the cover of hundreds more. )

But runway castings were tough. “I was also too big to fit in any of the clothes,” she remembers. “They weren't lying! I remember going to Paris and trying all those dresses on. I could never fit in them. And I was thin, but they were even thinner. So I never got those jobs.” 

Klum was also, perhaps, too happy. She cringes at the clichéd dourness on the runways back then.  She was informed she smiled too much.

“I can't not smile!” she says, laughing. “Then I don't look as you want me to. So all the things that I first wanted to do, they didn't work out. So I looked for things that I could do.”

“I always looked at things that I really wanted to do, and I went after them,” she says. “I always looked at my career kind of like a house where you don't only just need the front door to get in the house. I was always like, ‘Okay, they don't want me here for fashion. I'm going to go into other different places in the world.’”

Klum became a worldwide name in 1998, landing the prestigious cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue.

“Getting that phone call telling me that I was on the cover, it was like when someone wins $20 million in the lottery. Because at that time, without social media, I think the numbers were, like, 55 million readers or something. I could really feel that reach too. I would go into a restaurant, and people all of a sudden would be like, ‘That's that girl from Sports Illustrated.’ It just was such a big bouncing board for me to really make me go to the next step in my career.” That would be as an angel. Of sorts.

“I was proud of being in Victoria’s Secret,” she says of the 13 years she spent working with the lingerie brand, which included walking in the televised fashion-show specials. “I was super appreciative that they would pick me instead of someone else. People would say, ‘Oh, and they made us wear these wings, and da-da-da.’ I'm like, ‘I always wanted the wings.’ And I was upset if I didn't get the biggest ones!” 

She laughs at her ambition. “I would go to the top, and I'd be like, ‘Why am I having these small wings? I want bigger wings.’ Because for me it was always like a moment; this is the VS show. Everyone is watching. I don't want little chicken wings. I want the biggest wings you could possibly have, and I wore them proudly.” 

And Klum’s good friend Tyra Banks, also a longtime brand star, was always there, the wind beneath her Victoria’s Secret Angel wings. Their careers have often been in parallel.

“They used to call us Teidi and Hyra, we got along so well,” Klum says. “She was doing America's Next Top Model when I started with Project Runway. So, we would always exchange notes on what she's learning and what I was learning, and people were always like, ‘What is this stuff that you guys are doing?’ And a lot of people didn't also understand it, and they were just kind of all on this model path, but I was like, ‘But there's so many other fun things.’” 

From Humble Beginnings to One Epic Closet

She was never shy. Klum grew up in her hometown of Bergisch Gladbach, near Cologne, and loved to dance.

“Performing, I always wanted to be in the front. If my dance teacher put me in the second or third row, I would be upset. I would want to be in the front so my parents could take some nice photos of me, and I just loved it. For me, I was always like, ‘I'm not here to be comfortable, to blend in. I always wanted to stand out. I was always a ham.’”

She pauses. “Having been commercial wasn't really so bad because I'm 50 now. I started 30 years ago. I'm still here.”

Her clothes are too. Klum admits she’s something of a hoarder. “But,” she says, “that happens when you don’t come from a lot of money.” (Klum’s dad, Günther, worked in the perfume business and her mom, Erna, worked as a hairdresser.)

She won a modeling contest in 1992. “After Paris, Milan and London, I came to New York in 1994. I had probably three pairs of heels. I had a black pair, a silver pair and a gold pair, and they were on rotation. So if you look at old photos of mine when I'm on the red carpet and people were not giving things, those are the shoes that I had.” 

Today there’s a lot more. She hoards everything, she says. Art and clothes, mostly. And, really, the clothes.

“For me, I have to hang on to everything. But my daughter Leni, she's like, ‘Oh, I just got this. Do you want it? Take it.’ She's just easy to give things away, but I think it's because she's always had so many things, and I didn't. I have stuff everywhere. I have a huge walk-in closet. I have a really hard time throwing things away, because I know I'm going to wear this again at some point, and I do.”

Her denim collection runs deep. She even has, she says, a very "’90s Gap store" denim wall at home. “I have so many jeans that I have had for many, many years. It’s my wall of jeans. I feel like if they fit perfectly, and you just love them, then keep them. So many brands have come and gone. I still have them all.”

It’s a good thing she’s held onto so many things, too, since she chooses her look according to how she’s feeling at that moment. (That's another Gemini trait, she says.)

“I want to dress however my mood is that day. It's the same also when I do a TV show; I have to think about it days before a little bit. It sounds stupid, but it sinks in. And then I feel super comfortable in what I have on when I'm on TV.”

If her outfit can serve as a mood ring, her closet doubles as her IMDb page.

There’s her Project Runway days, on which she starred from 2004 to 2017. “The other day I had on a black bustier top that Christian Siriano made for me 100 years ago. I zipped it up, and I'm like, ‘Dang it, I still fit in it, I love it.’ I put it on with my jeans.”

As for other sartorial madeleines: “I like boho style.” (Making the Cut, with Tim Gunn.) “Sometimes I like to be a boss baby where I love a suit.” (Germany’s Next Topmodel, on which she’s starred and executive-produced for 19 seasons.) “I love miniskirts, I love boots.” (Perhaps those are from when she guest-starred on Spin City in the late ’90s with Michael J. Fox?) “Sometimes I like a little cowboy vibes, sometimes I like the hip-hop vibe.” (No idea.)  And of course, sequins. (America’s Got Talent, on which she’s wrapping up her 10th season this week.)

“When I do AGT, most of the time I sit behind a desk, so it's really from the waist up. So I look for something that is of interest around here. And usually”—she motions to her breasts—“I like to have Hans and Franz on a good display. But it's usually sequins or something with a great texture. I love big earrings or doing different things with my hair. Sofía [Vergara, her co-judge] and I have a good beauty and fashion thing going. Last week she was in yellow, and I was in red and people made ketchup and mustard memes.”

Heidi the Super Mom

Her kids Leni (19), Henry (18), Johan (16) and Lou (13)—Klum shares custody with her ex-husband, Seal—are not hoarders, and they are creative. It makes Klum proud.

“I feel like it's because I've traveled so much with them. And yes, they love art. I have a lot of great painters on the wall, huge paintings, but my greatest art is really, I probably have 50, 60 paintings of them on the wall.” She gets a mischievous look in her eye. “I'm actually doing a business with my kids. I'm very excited to have them involved. It’s art-related.” 

But when it comes to modeling. Leni, who’s studying interior design in New York City, is the only one of Heidi’s children following in her footsteps so far. And call her a nepo-baby all you want (for the record, Leni doesn’t care if you do), but her ever-growing resume proves she’s booked and busy thanks to her own talent (she’s walked the runway for Dolce & Gabbana, starred in a Michael Kors campaign and landed the cover of German Glamour). 

Business and fashion advice go both ways between mother and daughter these days. “I advise her all the time, she just doesn't want to hear it,” Klum says. “She couldn't care less what I say. Most of the time when I say something, she would actually do the opposite just because I said that. So sometimes I feel like I want to say the other thing so that she does what I would do.” Klum shrugs. 

The clothes go both ways too. Klum’s daughter, now 19, says, “I have stolen, though I like to say ‘borrowed,’ many things from my mom, but my all-time favorite thing I’ve ‘borrowed’ is her black Chanel bag.” Asked what she’d never borrow, Leni says, “I would never wear her fish flops shoes,” she says, referring to Klum’s realistic-looking rubber slides. “Mortifying.”

But, on a serious note—and in a legacy moment—Leni says her mom has given her one poweful piece of advice. “She taught me to trust my instincts,” Leni says, adding, “She also told me that the clothes are supposed to fit you—you are not supposed to fit the clothes.”  

Klum says Leni has a good business mind, and she comes by that naturally. Klum loves launching products and has many others, in addition to the art project, in her head.

“I love ice cream. I’d love to do a healthy ice cream. And flavored popcorn, love, but to me they always put too much flavoring. I always wonder: ‘Why can't I just have a hint?' But it's always doused in it. Like caramel, for example, then you have these gigantic caramel chunks in there. It's just too much,” she says. “Don't steal that idea.”

“We can talk about my body all you want."

Since the beginning of her career, her body has provided both paychecks and headlines. Even on the day of this interview, Klum was in the news for an erroneous report that she was on a strict 900-calorie-a-day diet. 

She usually doesn’t care about the chatter. “But the calorie thing I was very upset about. Not for me, because people say stuff all the time. I can't help that. But when it really affects other people, possibly where they possibly could get ill from following something stupid that someone made up. Then I get upset.”

She still is. She’s visibly angry. “I'm not a calorie counter,” Klum says firmly. “I never have. I've always been lucky that I've never had that obsession to count calories or whatever.” 

Regardless, Klum is fine talking about and showing her body. Wherever. Whenever.

“I'm super comfortable naked today. To the point where my kids are like, ‘Mom, I have a friend coming over.’ And I'm like, ‘Have I ever been naked in the backyard when a friend was coming over?’ As soon as someone is coming, I put my top on. But if no one is there, sun's out, bums out. I just don't like tan lines because I wear so many different outfits. I don't want to have straps anywhere from tan lines. It's very strategic.”

Klum prefers her husband, Tokio Hotel musician Tom Kaulitz, in the buff too. “Tom definitely looks the best naked!” she says with a laugh. “No, he looks good in everything. He does. I think he's super handsome, and right now he's like, ‘Oh, I'm a little bit pudgy.’ I actually love when he's a little bit pudgy, to be honest with you. I'm 50. I don't want him to be 34 and uber-shredded. I don't want someone who worries about their muscles all day long. To me it's manly when there is some… extra.”

Klum says the feeling is mutual these days.

“When he met me, he said, ‘You can always also eat a little bit more.’ And I was like, ‘What are you talking about?’ And I guess looking back, I was much thinner than I am today. When you're a model ... I guess I was exercising harder. I was running around outside, jogging and all of this stuff. Over the last few years, and especially since I've met him, I've just been more relaxed.” (For the record, Kaulitz prefers her blonde, with bangs, and in miniskirts. Says Klum: “So easy to keep him happy.”)

It’s not lost on Klum that 31 years after she won a televised talent show in Germany, Model 92, beating out 25,000 other people and changing the trajectory of her life, she’s now in a position to do that for others. On not one, but two TV shows. 

On America’s Got Talent, she is truly invested in the discovery and surprise, whether that's a singer (Heidi’s Golden Buzzer this season went to fan favorite Lavender Darcangelo) or someone, er, throwing up. 

“My all-time favorite!” Klum says with genuine amazement and a hearty laugh.  “He's this guy who would just swallow things and regurgitate them back up, and they would be totally dry. He would swallow sugar, for example. You see him swallow that. Then he'd drink a whole glass of water and then he regurgitates the sugar, dry, back up again. Or he took my ring, swallowed it, then he took a tiny little locket, swallowed it, and then he put my ring in the locket in his stomach and regurgitated it back up.” Her jaw drops. She’s still impressed.

But it’s on the set of Germany’s Next Topmodel where Klum’s life comes full circle. It’s there that she has the opportunity to change the very industry where she was not initially welcomed.

“When I look at these girls, at these people I should say, I think of myself when I started. I also can relate to them the most because they want to do what I've been doing for the last 30 years. But now we can have different kinds of people to search, whereas before there was a certain height, and there was a certain measurement that they had to have.” She pauses. “And it all has changed.” 

Maybe she didn’t mean to, maybe it’s a coincidence, or maybe she really just connected all the dots, but at that moment, Klum looked down at the Super seal on her chest. And grinned.

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