Dirty work: the story of supermodel Karen Mulder, who lost her beauty, contracts and mind
'12.04.2021'
Source: Woman.ru
Karen Mulder, one of the most beautiful women of our time, talked about the wrong side of the model world long before the #metoo movement. Then her confessions, flavored with shockingly frank details, were perceived by many as fabrications and nonsense, and now she is unlikely to speak again, because she has not completely coped with the experience.
The end of October 2001 year. Paris, studio of France 2 television channel. The recording of the entertainment show Tout Le Monde En Parle (“Everyone is talking about ...”) begins. The guest of the program is the top model Karen Mulder. Spectators are in joyful anticipation. The face of this dazzling blonde for more than ten years has not left the covers of top magazines and advertising billboards, says Woman.ru. And not a single person, as they say. Not for nothing that she has been the “angel” of Victoria's Secret for so many years!
Everyone is tuned to listen to fascinating stories from model life. Ok, there will certainly be complaints of eternal lack of sleep, flights and tedious shooting - where without it. But let her be sure to tell you about the secrets of beauty and her fans! Crowds of men probably run after her - and what ...
What came next, when the cameras turned on and the host Thierry Ardisson began playfully asking Mulder about how such a beautiful woman was living, no one could have imagined. The studio plunged into dead silence while the heroine uttered her monologue.
At some point, she had to be interrupted. Filming was canceled, and those present were asked to sign non-disclosure documents. Heard could not leave the studio. It was decided to destroy the tape with the recording. A few days later Karen herself was placed in a closed psychiatric clinic. And this was only the beginning of her free fall.
Alien among her
The nineties were the time of supermodels. There were not many, but what kind of girls they were! Linda, Christy, Naomi, Claudia, Cindy ... The whole world knew them by name, they were shot in their videos by singers like George Michael, and their statements fell on the front pages of newspapers. Here Linda Evangelista declares that less than 10 thousand dollars, she won’t even get out of bed - unheard-of arrogance! And here, you just look, Naomi, Christy and the same Linda fell with glasses of champagne into an empty bathtub and laughed posing for photographers at a party - this is life ... With whom did Claudia come out? This is the magician David Copperfield! Have you heard that Naomi decided to sing?
Irresistible, eccentric, arrogant - they attracted attention not only on the catwalks, but also beyond them. Karen Mulder has never been like this. But she also flew high.
A natural blonde carved like a figurine was considered one of the most calm and sober-minded models. Where others walked with their hips forward, she rather shyly smiled and stood quietly aside. However, she didn’t go unnoticed - how many girls have you seen with faces worthy of Botticelli’s paintings and such bodies? Her external modesty, on the contrary, played into the hands, distinguishing it from the others.
About the oddities that sometimes did appear, they will speak much later. After Karen is in the clinic, several people who worked on the backstage of the shows will remember how she, already fully made up, could burst into tears because everyone has beautiful dresses, and again she got “the worst”. Then it was perceived as usual girlish whims and in a hurry rushed to calm her and save her makeup.
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Million Dollar Baby
In the meantime, the mid-nineties are in the yard, and Karen, having wandered between Europe and America, settles in Paris, where she lives in the same apartment with her friend Carla Bruni. In the profession, they stayed together for a long time, preferring to have fun together. Both companies avoided noisy companies and were known as too intelligent and aristocratic girls for plebeian leisure. Bruni actually came from the Italian nobility, and Mulder, although she was from an ordinary family, was always perceived as a “white bone".
While Linda noisily threatened not to get up for less than 10 thousand dollars, Karen Mulder silently earned this amount daily. At that time, crazy money! In the profession, few were so lucky. Already in 21, she had a multi-million dollar contract with Guess. And it was very cool, it was after working with Guess in model ratings that another blonde soared - Claudia Schiffer.
Incredible natural beauty and becoming a Mulder did not leave anyone indifferent. She was eager to get megabrands from Nivea to Chanel, she was favored by designers from the picky esthete Valentino to the eccentric Galliano. In an industry where girls with beautiful bodies existed and worked separately from owners of beautiful faces (each type had their own contracts), Mulder could get everything from shooting in her underwear to close-up shooting for advertising Guerlain foundation. She was perfect from all angles and sides.
Have you already guessed that all this time she hated her appearance and believed that everything around was prettier? She also did not like to look at herself in the mirror.
In truth
"To begin with, I can say that I hate taking pictures ..." is a good recognition for a fashion model, right? Mulder made it two years before leaving for the so-called retirement - she left the business at thirty, in the 2000 year. At that time, it was really late, given that it was possible to start at least in 13 years, and to finish by about twenty-five. Karen was lucky like no one: in her 25 she still waved her snow-white wings on the Victoria's Secret show and did not think to slow down.
However, towards the end of the nineties, when everyone was just talking about “heroin chic,” and Kate Moss became the model in the modeling business, it became clear to beauties like our heroine that their era was leaving. Karen began to communicate more willingly with reporters, confusing them with her revelations.
“I've never been myself, not a single day,” she said. - No, don't get me wrong, models should play roles, get used to the images. But this is different. I was constantly told: "You are a fantastic beauty!" And I had no idea who I really was. Beauty, and even more so “fantastic”, I did not even feel close. The more enthusiasm sounded in my address, the more terrible it became inside ”.
“My work brought suffering, but it distracted them from them,” Mulder continued. “Pretending to be someone is easier than feeling an inner void and pain.”
Low self-esteem - like a roadside hogweed, poisonous and difficult to eradicate, but it grows easily and quickly, completely changing the picture around. Every day it seems that everything around is more beautiful, more interesting and more fun than you. Success is easier for others than you. In the end, everyone has beautiful dresses, and you have “the most terrible” again ... As a rule, this misfortune comes from childhood, which Karen Mulder was quite happy, at least in appearance.
Where did that come from
She was born in the Netherlands. The childhood of the future star of the catwalks took place between The Hague and Voorburg. The family was simple but wealthy. Father is a tax inspector, mother is a secretary. Mulder had a younger sister, Saskia, in both daughters, their parents did not cherish a dream, dreaming of giving them the best and showing the whole world. Since childhood, Karen was fond of swimming and loved to sing. When she was 15, the whole family went to the south of France, where she first saw an advertisement for the Elite Model Look contest, which launched many famous models.
Karen really wanted to try, but she didn’t even want to think what she could do. Having told about this friend, she, of course, did not assume that she would secretly send some of her photos to the Elite office ... The rest was a matter of technology. Karen was invited to the agency, she won the national stage of the competition in Holland and went to the international finals, where she took second place. A year later, she opened Valentino and Yves Saint Laurent shows, posed for covers.
It seems that live and rejoice, but in 2001, at the ill-fated show that the world has never seen, Karen will say that she was abused by her own father and some family friend who had been molesting her from early childhood. And this was far from the most shocking admission.
Dirty job
The life of the model is not only shows and shootings, but also parties. And sometimes you have to go to them, not because you want to, but because you need to. Beautiful girls decorate any table, box of a sports match or a loud presentation. And if you honor the presence of the event, the top model deigned, consider the holiday a success. Karen Mulder was actively published - accompanied by female colleagues from Elite, and agency bosses. She was constantly acquainted with high-ranking politicians, businessmen, representatives of European royal families. One of her friends was Albert II of Monaco, a great connoisseur of model beauty at that time.
Looking at such a photo, you are unlikely to suspect something bad. However, during the recording of the program “Everybody Talks about ...”, Mulder admitted that all the years in the profession she was constantly raped by men - from bookers to the leaders of her agency. Not to mention status acquaintances.
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It was literally said the following: “They wanted to make a prostitute out of me. I was pumped with drugs, I was subjected to hypnosis. And you can’t even imagine how simple it is and how terrible it is. The model industry is a conveyor of girls for wealthy men, and it will not work to bring the organizers to clean water: they have connections everywhere. ”
While the audience in the auditorium was digesting what they heard, Karen continued that Albert Monacsky was one of her rapists, with whom she, dazzlingly smiling, posed more than once at events. It was then that the leadership of the program decided not to release the recording on the air, to calm down the heroine and, just in case, to contact her relatives.
How did it all turn out, you ask?
A day later, Karen gave an interview to one of the entertainment magazines, where she repeated everything that was said on the show. She also admitted that a few days earlier she wrote a detailed statement to the police, where she indicated the names of all the men who forced her to have sex. One of them, besides Albert, was Gerald Marie, the head of the Paris office of Elite.
Find and neutralize
Further events developed rapidly. On the same day that Karen gave interviews to reporters, Saskia Mulder arrived from the Netherlands to Paris. My sister took Karen to the Villa Monsouri closed psychiatric clinic, where the top model spent almost five months. Paid for treatment - and a considerable amount - the same Gerald Marie from Elite.
All the same, I have to say it separately. A few years earlier, a man became the hero of an investigation by the BBC channel about the wrong side of the model world. Filmed by a hidden camera, Marie offered an 15-year-old model money for sex and smugly boasted how many new girls would go through his caring hands this year.
Today this is enough to expel a person from the profession and cover up with shame, but then, in the late nineties, Marie remained where he was. The conveyor continued to work.
Meanwhile, the press attacked the family of the model and her father, demanding comment on the allegations. Ben Mulder blamed everything on drugs that, according to him, Karen had been taking all the years in business, as well as on despair due to the fact that her daughter could not find a place in her life, ending her career. She never created her family: behind her was a divorce and a torn engagement.
Love and money
Karen Mulder married in 18 - for the Parisian photographer Rene Bozne. Five years later, they divorced when she already became a superstar, and he still could not reach her. In the year of divorce in the business lounge of Charles de Gaulle Airport, the 23-year-old Mulder met Jean-Yves Le Fure, a businessman, a great lover of women and models in particular.
They never entered into an official marriage, but managed to sign a lot of joint business documents. Having acquired one of the most beautiful girls of her time as a companion, Le Fure decided to become her manager to help her (and at the same time herself) get rich. With its filing, Karen released a personalized doll, and then a CD with her secrets of beauty and nutrition - of course, healthy.
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A few years later, her father Ben Mulder admits that Karen was obsessed with thinness from early childhood, throwing food out of the window and pouring milk into homemade flowers.
Joint projects with Le Fure shot. Long before her thirtieth birthday, Karen became a millionaire, but not a happy woman in love. They separated from Jean-Yves four years later, however, continuing to communicate as friends. The businessman claimed that he did not stop worrying about her. He willingly shared details with the press, because he felt a craving not only for female beauty, but also for publicity. It was Le Fure in December 2002, a year after the collapse of Mulder and her subsequent hospitalization, who would tell the tabloids one more news: Karen Mulder in a coma after swallowing sleeping pills in his Paris apartment.
Look for yourself
A few months earlier, having discharged from the clinic by the summer, the former top model said that she was recovering. She also said that she had written letters to all the men she was accused of inappropriate behavior during treatment. The very first letter, she said, flew away to Alber, and he generously forgave her. She came out of a coma the day after hospitalization, and she began to be treated again.
After some time, Karen promised that she feels much more confident than before, and now she certainly will not stumble. In 2004, she recorded a music album, the first track from which did not rise above the 13 line of the French hit parade, burying her dreams of a singer's career. But in the fall of the 2006 year, Mulder gave birth to a daughter, Anna, without admitting who her father is.
A year later, in the summer of 2007, Karen Mulder triumphantly returned to the podium - at the personal request of John Galliano, who for the autumn-winter show decided to bring together all his old favorites, Linda, Naomi, Karen and others. The 37-year-old blonde looked phenomenal, as before. However, after two years, her name again appeared in the tabloids.
This time, she threatened reprisal to her beautician, who did not want to continue stabbing her with Botox.
An employee of a beauty clinic, whose name was not disclosed, contacted the police with a statement that Karen Mulder had terrorized her with phone calls, demanding to schedule another injection session. The former model cried that she could not look at herself in the mirror even at night. Then there were threats that if a refusal follows again, the beautician should wait for the punishment of the dark forces ... Then they managed to hush up the situation without bringing to court. Since then, nothing has been heard much about Karen Mulder. She leads a secluded life, very rarely going out. You can hardly find out the former star of the catwalks in this woman.
It would seem that now, when the press is showing up every day, when even the almighty Harvey Weinstein flew away from his post overnight, and the sins of the former bosses of many modeling agencies were proved long ago, one could go back and tell their story again. But at the time of high-profile statements, Mulder prefers to be quieter than water and no longer wake famously.
