Gisele Bündchen Covers ELLE’s October 2022 Issue, Talks Family, Mindfulness and Environmental Advocacy

Pin

Gisele Bündchen covers ELLE’s October 2022 issue, styled by Alex White and photographed by Inez & Vinoodh, who asked her to channel biker-chic strength in the Hamptons backcountry for ELLE’s cover. The legendary supermodel talks about trading the runway for family, mindfulness and environmental advocacy, along with what the future holds: “I have a huge list of things that I have to do, that I want to do. At 42, I feel more connected with my purpose.”

Bündchen also speaks about her husband Tom Brady coming out of retirement and how ultimately, she wants him to be happy and she knows better than anyone how much he loves the sport: “Obviously, I have my concerns—this is a very violent sport, and I have my children and I would like him to be more present. I have definitely had those conversations with him over and over again. But ultimately, I feel that everybody has to make a decision that works for [them]. He needs to follow his joy, too.”

Pin

Pin

Pin

Pin

On how for most of her kids’ lives she purposely downshifted her fashion career and limited herself to only a few advertising campaigns and magazine covers a year, which she likens the shift from the full-throttle pace of her twenties to the quiet family routines of her thirties to summiting a mountaintop and then descending into a valley: Bündchen happily made the switch. “I’m so grateful to have been there in those in rivers, and we have to think about what we’re doing, how moments that were really shaping who they are as people,” she says of her children’s early years… “There are so many things I’m working on, I’ll be here the entire day talking about it,” she says.  At that moment, I see her eyeing that mountaintop once again. “I feel very fulfilled in that way, as a mother and as a wife,” she says. “And now it’s going to be my turn. It’s not like a I’m going to be in the valley forever.”

On making her own plans for the future and how she has been content with her chapter away from the spotlight: “I’ve done my part, which is [to] be there for [Tom]. I moved to Boston, and I focused on creating a cocoon and a loving environment for my children to grow up in and to be there supporting him and his dreams. Seeing my children succeed and become the beautiful little humans that they are, seeing him succeed, and being fulfilled in his career—it makes me happy. At this point in my life, I feel like I’ve done a good job on that.” Looking forward, Bündchen is going to make more space for her dreams, too. “I have a huge list of things that I have to do, that I want to do,” she says. “At 42, I feel more connected with my purpose.”

On how she is often depicted by the media as desperate for Brady to retire and how this characterization seems sexist: “I think this is the system we’ve been living in. That’s what society has accepted and what society hasn’t accepted.” Ultimately, she wants him to be happy and she knows better than anyone how much he loves the sport. “Obviously, I have my concerns—this is a very violent sport, and I have my children and I would like him to be more present,” she says. “I have definitely had those conversations with him over and over again. But ultimately, I feel that everybody has to make a decision that works for [them]. He needs to follow his joy, too.”

On her experience spending 10 days in 2004 living with an Indigenous tribe in the Xingu River region in the Amazon and how it gave her more insight into how communities that live in complete harmony with nature are not immune to the destructive impacts of the outside world: Mercury runoff from a mining operation miles away upstream and pesticides from agriculture runoff were contaminating their food sources. Bündchen understood the problem was much bigger than one river in Brazil. “In every major city, they’re putting toxins in rivers, and we have to think about what we’re doing, how we are jeopardizing the very ecosystem that provides us life,” she says. “We are all connected.”

On knowing how easy it is to feel discouraged by the damage we have inflicted on the planet, but refusing to surrender to such a mentality: “Most of the media chooses to focus on things that are negative, so if you are tuning into that frequency, you feel hopeless,” she says. “My intention is to bring hope, to bring the possibilities, to show the beauty— to say, ‘Hey, we’re living in heaven, right here.’”

[Photo Credit: Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin for ELLE Magazine]

• Alex White
• Editorials
• ELLE
• Gisele Bundchen
• Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin
• Magazines