How can you grow up in a healthy way if, from a very young age, someone in your own family gives you attention that was never wanted? This question quietly follows the story of Karen Mulder, one of the most famous supermodels of the 1990s and also one of the most vulnerable.
Karen Mulder never felt beautiful. She never dreamed of entering a beauty contest, nor did she imagine becoming the first Victoria’s Secret Angel or having a Barbie made in her image. In the mid-1980s she wore braces and did not see herself as a model at all. It was a friend who secretly took photos of her and entered her into the Elite Model Look contest. Encouraged by people around her, Karen participated and came second. That moment changed everything.
When the 1990s arrived, the fashion industry opened its doors wide. She became the face of Guess and soon began walking for the most prestigious fashion houses. Designers wanted her not only for her striking beauty, often compared to a real-life Barbie, but for her elegance and natural grace. Valentino, Mugler, Versace, Christian Lacroix and Victoria’s Secret all made her a central figure of the era. Karen Mulder had become, in every sense, a supermodel.
But it would be limiting to remember her only for her beauty. Karen Mulder was also one of the first models to speak openly about the injustices of the fashion world. Having experienced abuse and imbalance of power from an early age, she reached a breaking point in her early thirties. She began to describe an industry that looked glamorous on the outside but was deeply damaging behind the scenes.
In the early 2000s, Karen accused her own agency, Elite Model Management, of pressuring her into destructive behavior and relationships with powerful, much older men as part of her career path. These were heavy accusations, and the fashion system was not prepared to listen. Alone against a powerful industry, she was gradually pushed aside. Runways disappeared, opportunities vanished, and her credibility was questioned.
The consequences were devastating. Karen Mulder went through extremely dark years, including a suicide attempt in 2002. She publicly accused influential men, including Prince Albert of Monaco, and the media chose to frame her as unstable rather than confront the system she was describing. For most of the 2000s, she lived in near total isolation. The only major designer to bring her back on a runway was John Galliano for Dior in 2008.
So what happened to Karen Mulder? A woman already marked by trauma was left alone in a ruthless industry that first elevated her and then erased her.
Today, Karen Mulder lives a private life, far from fashion and public attention. She has chosen silence, distance, and invisibility as forms of self-protection. There is no official narrative about her present, and that absence feels intentional.
Her story is not just about a 90s supermodel. It is about what happens when beauty, power, and vulnerability collide, and about the human cost behind an industry that for a long time refused to look at itself honestly.