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68“Modeling is a careerthat I’ve had. Itallowed me to seethe world, and I waswell paid for it. But itnever defined me”GREEN WORLDHer fashion interests lie in designers who work with sustainablematerials: algae, hemp, bamboo. Tabula Rasa swimsuit.``````suitcase full of schoolbooks and a tiny backpack to fit allher clothing. “I’m not a model,” she says. “Modeling is ajob that I do, a career that I’ve had. It allowed me to see theworld, and I was well paid for it. But it never defined me.”We settle into a white sofa underneath the sanctuary’ssoaring rafters. A Buddha sits in the fireplace, holding ahunk of crystal. Fafi, Gisele’s youngest sister, who alsoserves as her personal assistant, brews tea in a flavor calledLove. Fluffers, a newly rescued Shih Tzu, sits in Gisele’s lap,while Lucky, Fafi’s Pomeranian, reclines odalisque-like ona cushion beside us. Gisele wears jeans, a gray cashmereV-neck, and thick wool sock boots. An intricate maze ofhenna winds up her forearms, residue from a recent trip toQatar. She talks a lot about love (“It’s my religion”), energy(“Everything is energy, right?”), and vibrations (“Life is liketuning a radio”). In fact, Gisele is an icon of what those inthe New Age community refer to as the “high-vibe life”:Raise your vibration, practitioners argue—through dietand yoga and meditation, by being grateful, nonjudgmen-tal, positive—and live the life you’vealways dreamed of.Those who dismiss this as woo-woononsense risk missing the vigor withwhich Gisele has undertaken a secondcareer as protector of planet Earth.In recent years she has lent her voice,her time, her image, her money, andher vast global network to a host ofenvironmental causes. She has plant-ed trees in Nairobi’s Kibera, knownas the largest urban slum in Africa.She has helped detoxify the river nearHorizontina, her hometown, throughthe Projeto Água Limpa, a clean-wa-ter initiative she established with herfamily. She starred in National Geo-graphic’s documentary series Years ofLiving Dangerously, venturing into the Brazilian jungle toexplore the link between deforestation and climate change.Gisele has been a goodwill ambassador to the United NationsEnvironment Programme since 2009, and last Septembershe was invited by French president Emmanuel Macronto speak to world leaders about the contamination of theglobal water supply and other industrial assaults. HarvardMedical School has honored her with its Global Environ-mental Citizen Award. More recently, she has sought to makethe fashion industry aware of its significant environmentalimpact. Saving the planet, she hopes, will be her enduringlegacy long after the media have become as tired as she hasof epithets like glamazon and Brazilian bombshell.“There are enough signs that we can’t keep going in thisdirection,” says Gisele, who talks a mile a minute and oscil-lates between finding the comedy in our human failings andbecoming so passionate about her subject that tears emergeat the edges of her blue eyes. “People forget that without ahealthy environment, there are no healthy humans, becauselast time I checked, our life depends on the health of ourplanet, period. At the end of the day, the Earth will be fine.If we are gone, she’s going to regenerate herself. So we haveto think about how we’re going to survive on it. How canwe have the least impact?”``````A sense of interconnectedness appears to have originatedin Gisele’s childhood. One of six sisters, a middle child anda twin, she has been sharing since she was in the womb. “Icome from a middle-class family,” she says—her father was asociology professor, her mother a bank clerk—“and everyonehad to chip in.” Chores were the norm: “One sister cleans thebathroom, one cleans the kitchen. This is why it was OK forme to leave at fourteen, because I knew how to take care ofmyself.” At fifteen she was reading books by Lao Tzu andthe contemporary Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh. By sixteenshe was living in New York City, in a model apartment withbunk beds, four girls per room.“I was watching all the chaos but never getting that close,”she remembers. “Drugs. Girls coming and going, somemaking it, some heading down a bad path and going home.I was never a party girl. You can’t be reading Lao Tzu andpartying. The environment I was living in wasn’t matchingthe things I was interested in. I was wondering, How is itthat we’re all floating on this blue dot in space? I’ve alwaysbeen a curious person, and I’ve alwaysasked the big questions. What else?What more? This can’t be all there is.”As a seventeen-year-old, Giseleearned what is widely regarded as herbig break when Alexander McQueencast her in his spring-summer 1998show, adorning her bust in nothingbut white paint and dubbing her “theBody.” Within months she was a fash-ion star. Her first U.S.Vogue cover, inJuly 1999, announced the return ofthe sexy model. (It was the first of herthree Vogue covers that year.) Duringthe spring 2000 Fashion Weeks, sheopened shows for Marc Jacobs, Mi-chael Kors, Dolce & Gabbana, andChristian Dior. But while designersthrew campaigns at her feet, she was never comfortable withthe attention. “I’m a Cancer,” she explains, “the little crab.Loves the home, her sanctuary, all the cozy things. So I wasa fish out of water in fashion. I was always like, Let me goto the job and go home.”In 2002, Gisele had an experience that transformed herrelationship to the business. At that year’s Victoria’s Secretfashion show, protesters from People for the Ethical Treat-ment of Animals rushed the stage brandishing signs that read,gisele: fur scum, in response to recent news of her contractwith the furrier Blackglama. “Suddenly it dawned on me,”she explains. “I was in the hamster wheel: I’m just going togo out there and be a good girl and do what my agent tellsme to do. What do I know? It wasn’t until that shock—itstopped me in my tracks. They sent me all these videos. Iwasn’t aware of what was happening, and I was devastated.So I said, ‘Listen, I’m not doing fur campaigns.’ It put mein the driver’s seat, finally. The universe comes to you andsays, ‘Hello, maybe you should notice this.’ You need to beresponsible for the choices you make.”