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From queen to goddess

GISELE BÜNDCHEN GOES TO NEVER-NEVER LAND AND OFFICIALLY BECOMES A LIVING LEGEND

words by Alexandre Xavier / picture by Annie Leibovitz

An editing mistake by the BBC last year set off a scandal: before taking a portrait of Queen Elizabeth, the all-powerful photographer Annie Leibovitz asked Her Majesty to take off the tiara she was wearing to appear a little “less dressy”. And the Queen then supposedly had a hissy fit. But internet users are a far more heretical breed than BBC executives could ever hope to be. After discovering that Gisele Bundchen had also been snapped by Leibovitz this year, there’s a rumour doing the rounds on the internet that the photographer is moving on up. First she photographed the Queen. Then Gisele. Now all that’s left is a portrait of God.

The supermodel took part in the “Disney Dream Portrait Series”, in which celebrities are shot embodying mythical Disney characters. The aim is to promote “The Year of a 1000 Dreams”, a marketing ploy in full force at Disney Parks across the US. Jennifer Lopez and hubby Marc Anthony became Jasmine and Aladdin sat on a flying carpet. Scarlett Johanson played at Cinderella and tennis champ Roger Federer was shot as King Arthur. But the best fantasy of all – due to the fantastic metaphor – was David Beckham as a character out of Sleeping Beauty (great idea, right, Fabio Capello?).

Gisele appeared in the project in a London setting as Wendy Darling, woken up by Tinkerbell (personifi ed by actress Tina Fey) and Peter Pan (dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov). It was all Gisele
needed to become an eternal icon: be swept off to Never-Never Land, where no one ever grows old.
But, coming back down to Earth, the major advantage of photographing Gisele rather than the Queen is that she would take Liebovitz’s words to heart and defi nitely appear “less dressy” if need be. JD