Heidi Klum

Heidi Klum is a German-American model, TV personality, and businesswoman whose three-decade career has made her one of the most-iconic German fashion-modeling and American TV-host figures of her generation. She was born Heidi Klum on June 1, 1973, in Bergisch Gladbach, North Rhine-Westphalia, West Germany. She entered modeling at age 19 in 1992 by winning a German modeling contest that included a cash prize and an American agency contract.

Her American breakthrough came with her 1998 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue cover and her 1999 entry into the Victoria's Secret Angels program — the supermodel group of the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show. Klum walked the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show runway from 1997 to 2010, becoming one of the most-iconic Victoria's Secret faces of the late 1990s and 2000s.

Her American TV-host role came in 2004 when she became the host and an executive producer of Bravo's reality competition Project Runway — the American fashion-design competition that elevated American fashion-industry visibility through the 2000s and 2010s. Klum hosted the show for 16 seasons across 2004–2017 (with the show moving from Bravo to Lifetime in 2008). Her catchphrase "Auf Wiedersehen" (German for "goodbye") at each Project Runway elimination became one of the American reality-TV catchphrases of the 2000s.

Her subsequent TV-host work has included NBC's America's Got Talent (2013–2018, where she replaced Howard Stern as a primary judge), the 2018 Amazon Prime Video competition Making the Cut (with co-host Tim Gunn), and continued judge appearances on German reality shows. She has been active in the American fashion-business space — including her 2001 launch of the Heidi Klum lingerie line and continued ownership of the Heidi Klum brand.

Her name Heidi is the Swiss-German short form of Adelheid (from the Old Germanic Adalheid meaning "of noble kind"). Heidi has been continuously among the most-popular American girls' names since the late 1960s, anchored partly by the Johanna Spyri 1881 children's novel Heidi and partly by Heidi Klum's continuous American TV visibility.