Christie Brinkley Went to Paris to Heal From a Breakup — & Accidentally Became a Supermodel

Christie Brinkley didn’t move to Paris to chase fame. She moved there to cry over a cheating ex.

At 18, fresh off a breakup and done with L.A. heartbreak, she packed up and enrolled in a French art school, hoping that a change of scenery — and maybe a baguette or two — would help her forget. “I have always wanted to try to do as many things as possible,” she told The Sydney Morning Herald in a lengthy new profile. And back then, that meant starting over somewhere beautiful.

While she was in Paris, things started to look up. She fell in love with Jean-François Allaux, a French artist who would become her first husband. But then he got drafted into the military, and Brinkley — newly heartbroken for the second time — adopted a puppy named Bianca to keep her company. Bianca, it turns out, would be the one to change everything.

In the spring of 1974, the puppy got sick. Brinkley left her apartment to call a vet and, while looking down at Bianca curled up in her bag, accidentally walked into a man in a faded green US Army jacket. He had a camera around his neck. “If you’re not a model, you should be,” he told her. “You could earn a lot of money.” When he asked her name, she said, “Christie Brinkley.”

That chance run-in kicked off what Brinkley later called a “succession of go-sees, shoots, commercials and covers.” Within months, she was on 11 magazine covers “all published about the same time,” including Mademoiselle, Cosmopolitan, Redbook, Vogue France, and Harper’s Bazaar. She would go on to become the first person to land three consecutive Sports Illustrated swimsuit covers and lock down a 25-year contract with CoverGirl — one of the longest modeling deals in history.

So yes: a cheating boyfriend. A sad Paris chapter. A sick dog. And then — superstardom. The identity of the boyfriend who started it all? Still a mystery. Brinkley has never named him, and the Herald doesn’t drop any clues. But we owe that man a thank you (and maybe a mild curse), because his bad decisions launched a modeling career that reshaped beauty standards for decades.

Now 71, Brinkley runs her own wine label, Bellissima, and fashion line, TWRHLL. She’s weathered divorce, trauma, public scrutiny — and still keeps showing up with a sense of humor and a mission. “I have always wanted to try to do as many things as possible. Have all these different experiences and fill up my life with adventures,” she told the Herald.

Safe to say: she understood the assignment.

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