Claudia Schiffer was born in West Germany in 1970 and became famous for Guess advertising campaigns.
Schiffer was discovered in a Düsseldorf nightclub in 1987 and soon moved into international modeling. Her appearance was often compared with that of Brigitte Bardot, and Guess campaigns helped make her recognizable to a mass audience in the early 1990s.
She became one of the original “Big Five” supermodels, a group associated with the period when leading models achieved unusual fame and negotiating power. Schiffer also worked extensively with Chanel and appeared on numerous magazine covers.
The phrase “born in West Germany” reflects the political geography of her birth: Germany was still divided when she was born. The Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic reunified in 1990, when Schiffer was 19.