Nadja Auermann

By SARA TEMPLETON

Life can unfair at times, but as my eternally positive brother says, you've got to take it on the chin and try to roll with the punches.

I'm taking specifically about genetics, and how some people just 'get lucky', while others get called lazy-eyed freaks and so forth.

Sometimes I feel it is unfair that some women can be born with the genes that eventually lead to the Guinness Book of Records award for the "supermodel with the longest legs".

But at the same token, Nadja Auermann may not win the prize for the most peculiar fashion writer on the planet, so for now, at least, I can rest easy in such knowledge.

But enough of the philosophising and on with the task at hand - the life and times of Nadja Auermann.

Born on March 19, 1971, in West Berlin, Germany, Nadja's parents were bankers, and despite her parents divorcing some two years after she was born, she still experienced a happy childhood.

By the time she was 13, Nadja had been attracting the attention of hormonal boys at school thanks to her incredible legs and her sister suggested that she should forget her dream of becoming an architect and try modeling instead.

She graduated from her school in 1989, at the age of 18, and is quoted as saying:"I was unsure what I wanted to do. I was bright, but I decided to take a year out two off to think about things and work as a waitress or something.

"But then I was sitting in a cafe and a woman came up and asked me to model. This time I thought, why not? I called her a few weeks later."

Indeed, her chance meeting with the talent scout was incredibly good luck, and set off a chain of events that would eventually see her becoming one of the world's most sought-after models.

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The job the scout singled her out for was to model in a travel catalogue and one of the photos from the shoot was picked up by a casting agent who liked what he saw.

In 1990, at the age of 19, Nadja travelled with her casting agent to Paris where she signed on with the Karins model agency. Things didn't go so well with the Karins outfit and Nadja was also having trouble adjusting to the helter-skelter cost of living in the big smoke.

"At first it seemed such a tough city. After school I'd been living on my own in Berlin, paying the rent and learning how to handle money a bit, and I was shocked by the rents here," says Nadja of moving to Paris.

A year later the leggy German hopeful signed with a new agency, Elite models, and before long her luck was already beginning to change. She scored a Benetton campaign and then came an article featuring her pictures in French Vogue.

On the cusp of greatness, Nadja is again gifted with good fortune as virtuoso photographer Ellen Von Unwerth invites her to a photo shoot after going over her portfolio.

The Editorial titled 'She is an Enigma' appeared in the 1991 in the UK edition of Vogue and it was this coverage that finally shot her into the mainstream world of fashion.

In 1993, Nadja dyed her hair platinum blonde, and she was now a force to be reckoned with.

By the time 1994 rolled around, she had the curious honour of being the only model to be featured on the cover of two of the world's biggest and most popular fashion mags at the same time: US Vogue and US Harper's Bazaar.

Her magazine appearances didn't wane either, and she has since graced the pages of the German, Japanese, British and American editions of Elle, plus Esquire magazine and the Italian, French, British and American Vogue.

As well as appearing on runways in high-calibre fashion shows for the likes Gianni Versace, Yves Saint Laurent, Dolce & Gabbana, Prada, Giorgio Armani, Karl Lagerfeld, Versace Atelier and Christian Dior, Nadja made news by appearing alongside the prodigal daughter Linda Evangelista in George Michael's 'Too Funky' music video.

The highly-sought after Pirelli calendar was another feather in Nadja's cap and in 1999 she dated Swedish model Alex Lundqvist, and eventually married actor Wolfram Grandezka.

Even after having children, Nadja's ambition got the better of her and in 2003 she released a a fragrance simply entitled 'Nadja Auermann', and in the same year she also became the new face and body of Wonder-Bra.

Life can be unfair at times, and even super-successful top models like Nadja have their bad days and negative weeks, and though I'm still not happy with this whole genetics issue, the "longest legs" accolade no longer pains me - this short-legged woman is rollin' with the punches, baby!

Source: Unknown Photography: Irving Penn	Source: Unknown Photography: Arthur Elgort