ONCE THERE was a handful of women -- Naomi, Cindy, Claudia, Linda -- so famous they were known by first names. They ruled the empires of fashion and beauty. And then they were gone, supplanted by nameless rail-thin "waifs" whose looks and postures suggested fashion might, after all, be bad for your health.

Enter Gisele Bundchen, a 19-year-old Brazilian model who, in the past six months, has turned the fashion industry on its head and almost single-handedly portrayed a more curvaceous, healthy ideal of beauty.

Gisele's achievement -- to lead fashion out of what many see as a dour, minimalist period -- has been rewarded with an unheard-of triple, featuring on the covers of the three big United States fashion magazines, Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, and W, in the same month.

Vogue seems smitten with the 1.8m, 52kg model, naming her model of 1999 and placing her on its covers four times in as many months.

As the magazine pointed out, "pretty much everybody in the world wants Gisele to look good on his or her behalf."

And that includes the fashion designers, who place her in pole position in catwalk shows and are prepared to pay millions for Gisele to star in advertising campaigns. Open the magazines and you find page after page of Gisele, employed by Versace, Ralph Lauren, Dolce & Gabbana and Valentino.

The great-great-granddaughter of German immigrants to Brazil, Gisele grew up as one of five sisters in a village in the southern state of Rio Grand do Sul. On her first trip to Sao Paulo, while eating her first McDonald's, she was approached by a modeling agent and, despite resistance from her father, moved to the city, aged 14, to pursue a career.

Her big break came modeling for Alexander McQueen. Soon top photographers were booking her. Then came an issue of the hyper-trendy magazine BIG devoted exclusively to her that, in turn, secured ascendance to the closest thing the world now has to the supermodel, a woman who sells magazines and clothes with face and figure alone.

"She's just a very good model", says New York stylist Andrew Richardson.

Refreshingly, Gisele has no Hollywood dreams, no difficult books by her bedside, no spells in detox. She talks of having children, horses, chickens, and dogs on a farm, like her grandparents had in Brazil.

And to the interest of men everywhere, she has no public paramour besides Vida, her Yorkshire terrier. "No sex-drugs-rock'n'roll," she recently told Vanity Fair. "I don't want to look back and feel I did everything wrong."

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