Gisele Bündchen bids farewell to the runway after stellar 20-year career

Gisele Bündchen takes one last stroll down the runway

The Brazilian beauty bid farewell to the catwalk, closing out a stellar 20-year career.

It’s the end of a beautiful era in the fashion world.

In an emotionally charged show, Gisele Bündchen took her last stroll down the runway, bidding farewell to a 20-year career that has made her a fashion legend.

The 34-year-old mother of two, who is married to NFL quarterback Tom Brady, compared her life to a cup of water that is filled to the brim.

“If your cup is full, how are you going to put more into it?” the Brazilian said in an interview broadcast in the Globo television network on Wednesday. “I’m emptying my cup so I can put more things into it.”

Bündchen made her final catwalk appearance during São Paulo Fashion Week for Colcci, the Brazilian streetwear label she has represented since 2005. She made three appearances, opening the show in an A-line dress in white lace and knee-high black boots and closing it in a sundress with a full skirt in ivory and salmon stripes.

For the final bow, a bevy of models emerged in jeans and T-shirts printed with Bündchen's image, and Bündchen herself wove her way through the pack, sporting painted-on jeans and a top depicting her in a yoga pose. Fighting back tears, she flashed her trademark broad smile and a thumbs-up.

Brady was on hand for his wife’s final appearance, competing with his wife for the cameras’ attention as he took in the spectacle from the first row.

In a Facebook post on Wednesday, the New England Patriots quarterback congratulated his wife on her final catwalk.

“Congratulations Love of my Life. You inspire me every day to be a better person. I am so proud of you and everything you have accomplished on the runway,” he wrote. “I have never met someone with more of a will to succeed and determination to overcome any obstacle in the way. You never cease to amaze me.”

He added, “Nobody loves life more than you and your beauty runs much deeper than what the eye can see. I can’t wait to see what’s next.”

As the world’s highest-paid model, according to a 2014 ranking by Forbes magazine, Bündchen has said she wants to spend more time with her family, but vowed to continue working in the industry.

She is the face of Chanel, Carolina Herrera, Pantene and other top brands. She also designs her own line of flip flops and lingerie.

A household name the world over, Bündchen rivals soccer legend Pelé for the status of Brazil's most internationally famous citizen, and her meteoric rise from a middle-class family in a small, rural town to superstar is the stuff of modeling legend.

In a post Wednesday on her Instagram account, Bündchen wrote, "Today after 20 years in the industry, it is a privilege to be doing my last fashion show by choice and yet still be working in other facets of the business."

"I am grateful that at 14, I was given the opportunity to start this journey," she wrote.

In an interview earlier this week with the newspaper Estado de São Paulo, Bündchen was quoted as saying she wanted her last runway experience to be in her native Brazil, "where it all started."

She was born and raised along with five sisters, including a fraternal twin, in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul, a center of German immigration to Brazil. Bündchen was discovered by a modeling agency at age 14 and she came in second place in a nationwide modeling contest, before moving to New York to work the fashion runways there.

By age 20, she had become a fashion sensation, her freckled face and flowing, dirty blond locks gracing the cover of top fashion magazines worldwide, and her unique combination of legginess and curves causing a sensation during runway appearances. Bündchen's success was heralded as marking the end of the sickly, skinny and bedraggled "heroin chic" look that had dominated runways for years.

Her romantic life was regularly splashed across gossip magazines, as she was romantically linked to a series of A-listers, from surfer Kelly Slater to actor Leonardo DiCaprio. In 2009, she married New England Patriots quarterback Brady. The couple has two children.

Last year, she out-earned Brady, netting an estimated $47 million on contracts, according to Forbes. The next highest-earning models on the Forbes celebrity list, Doutzen Kroes of the Netherlands and fellow-Brazilian Adriana Lima, earned $8 million each, according to the magazine.

Based on reporting by the Associated Press.

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