Isabeli Bergossi Fontana (born July 4, 1983, in Curitiba, Brazil) is a Brazilian fashion model whose career has spanned more than two decades at the highest level of the industry. Of Italian descent, she was granted Italian citizenship in 2021, and remains one of the most recognisable Brazilian models of her generation.
Discovery and Early Career
Fontana was thirteen years old when she reached the finals of the 1996 Elite Model Look contest. In 1997 she moved to Milan to pursue professional modelling, and by the age of fifteen she was walking the Milan runways for Versace, Givenchy and Michael Kors. In 1999, aged sixteen, she appeared in a Victoria's Secret lingerie catalogue — an appearance that attracted attention because the brand had publicly stated it would not use models younger than eighteen. She was soon working with houses including Versace, Ralph Lauren and Valentino.
Rise to Prominence
Her international breakthrough came with a 2004 American Vogue cover photographed by Steven Meisel, on which she appeared alongside Gisele Bündchen and other leading models of the era. Across her career she has featured on 58 Vogue covers, and Vogue Paris named her among the top thirty models of the 2000s. In 2008 she entered the Forbes ranking of the world's highest-paid models at number eleven, with reported annual earnings of three million dollars.
Campaigns and Legacy
Fontana has fronted major campaigns including Hermès (2004), Viktor&Rolf's Flowerbomb fragrance (2014) and Bulgari's Goldea (2015), and has worked with Chanel, Balenciaga, Dolce & Gabbana, Roberto Cavalli and H&M. Represented by leading agencies across New York, Paris, Milan and London, she has remained a consistent presence on international runways well into her forties. She is the mother of two sons, Zion (born 2003) and Lucas (born 2006), has been in a relationship with Diego Ferrero since 2016, and served as a judge at the Miss Universe 2011 pageant held in São Paulo. A fixture of Brazilian fashion, she is regularly cited among the country's most successful modelling exports.