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Karen Mulder, (born 1 June 1968 in
Vlaardingen, Zuid-Holland, Netherlands) is a Dutch former model.
Raised in Den Haag and Voorburg, Mulder's father, Ben, is a tax inspector
and her mother, Marijke, is a secretary. Mulder has a younger sister,
Saskia, who became an actress after a stint studying economics. In 1985,
her family went on a camping trip in the south of France. She saw an ad
for Elite Model Management's "Look of the Year" contest in a newspaper. A
friend took some photographs she had of her and sent them to Elite without
her knowledge. She won the preliminary contest in Amsterdam, and was sent
to the finals of the contest, placing second. She soon went to Paris for
her first modeling shoot. She then left high school to travel to Italy
with her mother for a formal photo shoot, and then to Paris for modeling
school, where Elite took over her career.
By her second year on the runway, she was modeling for Valentino, Yves
Saint Laurent, Lanvin, Versace, and Giorgio Armani. She appeared on the
cover of Vogue and before long, landed a contract for Guess in 1991, when
she was 21 years old. She soon appeared on the cover of British Vogue and
in a Nivea advertising campaign.
Other campaigns she appeared in included Calvin Klein, Claude Montana,
Ralph Lauren, Yves Saint-Laurent's Rive Gauche fragrance, as well as
Guerlain, Chloé, Revlon, Jacques Fath, Gianfranco Ferré, Gianni Versace,
Chanel and Hervé Léger. Karen has worked with some of the greatest fashion
photographers, including Javier Vallhonrat, Peter Lindbergh, Patrick
Demarchelier, Bruce Weber, Helmut Newton, Max Vadukul, Gilles Bensimon,
Fabrizio Ferri, Steven Meisel, Irving Penn, Robert Erdmann, and Arthur
Elgort.
One of the first issues of Top Model magazine was entirely devoted to
Mulder along with an entire issue of Italian Vogue. Her two appearances in
the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue in 1997 and 1998 and her poses for
the Victoria's Secret catalogue increased Mulder's profile.
Called "The Blonde With Class" by Vogue editors, she went on to share
catwalks with models such as Kate Moss, Cindy Crawford, Claudia Schiffer,
and Naomi Campbell. At one point in her career she was earning up to
£10,000 a day. Mulder retired from modeling in 2000.
Afterwards, she tried other career paths. She branched out into acting,
making her debut in the French short film A Theft, One Night in 2001. She
also pursued a career in music but had limited success. Her first effort
at establishing a music career was her cover version of Gloria Gaynor's "I
Am What I Am", which appeared on the French music charts for a time in the
summer of 2002.
In 1988, at the age of 18, Mulder married French photographer René Bosne.
By 1993, her marriage had fallen apart and they divorced. Mulder says her
life changed in 1993 when she was shuttling from airport to airport with
almost no time at home. She then met real estate developer Jean-Yves Le
Fur in the waiting area of a Paris airport. Soon they became engaged.
Le Fur began to manage Mulder's off-the-runway career. In 1995, he
collaborated with Hasbro on a Karen Mulder doll, which spurred development
of an entire line of dolls modeled on the day's supermodels. Le Fur and
Mulder then did an infomercial and video. Mulder's favorite project she
worked on was a beauty and fashion CD-ROM, in which she gave makeup,
beauty, and exercise tips. In 1995, she bought a château in France and set
up a scheme to provide holidays there for underprivileged children.
On 31 October 2001, Mulder claimed during a taping of the French channel
France 2 show Tout le Monde en Parle (Everyone is Talking About It) hosted
by Thierry Ardisson, and with a live audience in the studio, that various
people, including top executives at her former agency, Elite Model
Management, and Prince Albert of Monaco, had tried to rape her. Moreover,
Mulder said that her own father had hypnotized her from the age of two and
then raped her. The producers of the show deemed her emotionally unstable
and did not broadcast the interview. Not only was the show never aired,
but the entire recording was erased.
Days later, Mulder repeated her allegations, this time to a weekly
magazine in an interview conducted in her Paris apartment. Within hours of
the interview, her sister Saskia arrived and took her to Villa Montsouris,
a psychiatric hospital specializing in such disorders as depression,
anxiety, and delirium, where she stayed for five months. The stay
reportedly was paid for by Elite models president Gerald Marie, an old
friend of hers and one of the accused. (It came after the BBC caught Marie
on hidden camera trying to give a 15-year-old model £300 for sex, and
bragging Elite Model Look competitors he would sleep with that year.)
On 11 December 2002, after suffering for years from chronic depression,
Mulder went into a coma after she overdosed on sleeping pills in an
apparent suicide attempt. She left no note. She was rushed to the American
Hospital in Neuilly after neighbors found her passed out on the floor of
the Paris apartment on exclusive Avenue Montaigne where she was staying
with friends. Mulder's parents flew from the Netherlands to be by her side
along with former fiancé Jean-Yves Le Fur. Le Fur was reportedly one of
the people who found Mulder unconscious after arriving at the apartment
after Mulder had not answered several of his telephone calls. She awoke
from her coma the next day.
In the summer of 2004, Mulder decided to re-enter the music industry. She
worked with Daniel Chenevez of the Niagara group to create the self titled
CD Karen Mulder. She gave birth to a daughter, Anna, on 30 October 2006.
On 1 July 2007 she returned to the catwalk at the Dior Autumn/Winter 07/08
Couture Collection in Paris, modelling alongside Naomi Campbell, Linda
Evangelista, Helena Christensen, Amber Valletta, Shalom Harlow and Stella
Tennant.
On 1 July 2009, the Daily Mail reported that Mulder was arrested in Paris
for threatening to attack her plastic surgeon. |
