Heidi Klum on Her Daily Diet, New Amazon Show and Taking Vitamins at 45
Heidi Klum is a model mogul in transition: she just wrapped her 6th season as a judge on “America’s Got Talent” Wednesday night, and earlier this month bid adieu to her gig as “Project Runway” host after 16 seasons. She and the show’s mentor Tim Gunn are creating a new, shoppable fashion show for Amazon.
Klum, who has an eponymous intimates line that sells in all the majors as well as Amazon, also just signed on as the first U.S. ambassador for U.K. beauty supplement Perfectil. The deal, announced Thursday at the Waldorf Astoria in Beverly Hills, will put Klum in front of television, print and digital campaigns to show basically, that you are what you eat.
“This is actually the very first time I am taking a multivitamin, and I am 45,” said Klum, who was approached by Perfectil at the beginning of the summer. “I never found the urge to take them, and never felt it was necessarily for me because I eat super healthy. I have four kids so we cook every day, and I make sure that when they get out of the house they’ve had something strong.”
Her morning go-to’s include oatmeal, eggs, avocado toast and spinach. She also makes smoothies. “In the beginning I used to have to pay my kids to drink them and now, they just have to. But when they were little I gave them 25 cents for their piggy bank every morning,” she said.
Since she was skeptical of vitamins at first, she took one a day all summer and says she has noticed a difference in her hair, skin and nails.
“These are all my nails,” she said, holding out her well-manicured talons. “But people shouldn’t think, ‘Great I just have that and I don’t need to eat my fruit and vegetables anymore. You are what you eat so that is the number one priority, and then why not take one pill a day and have extra vitamins and minerals?”
She’ll undergo and even bigger change in routine without her “Project Runway” schedule, which had her moving her family to New York each summer to tape.
“Once the show moved from Lifetime to Bravo it gave me time to take a breather. When I started looking at it, I was like, ‘You know what? We created something really amazing, I’m really proud of it, and this is a baby that I will always love. Now it’s walking on its own and I’m ready for a new baby that I want to make just as amazing if not better.”
She and Gunn, who she calls her “TV husband,” chose Amazon because of its reach in 200 countries. Not only will viewers around world be able to stream the show on their laptops, they’ll be able to shop the designs they see and have them delivered in two days.
“I think of all the times [cable network] people have said no, and these no’s have now turned into yes’s because we have more freedom,” she said.
“What we’ve never had before is doing something for the designers. Yes, you can win the show and you get the $100,000 at the end but really it is so hard to break into this this industry because normally you need someone who backs you. So it’s hard for them to have clothes walking down the runway and then to have someone possibly buying your stuff. To get to that point takes forever, if you even get to that point.
So now going into 200 countries, someone watching the show on their laptop seeing something they love, they would click and then boom – two days later with Amazon you have it in your closet. It’s amazing for women shopping and it’s even more amazing for the designers because now a TV show has become reality. A lot of these things they are great to look at on TV but not everyone gets to be as successful as Christian Siriano. We can now introduce designers from all over the world and the casting can be wider,” she said.
While production is just ramping up, and the show won’t start taping until next year, Klum said he brain is already in overdrive with ideas. “I’ve always been an ideas person so now this is my chance to put all of them into a new show.”
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