The question of which Brazilian supermodel looks better in a bikini at 45 is, frankly, the wrong question. The right one is why Alessandra Ambrosio and Izabel Goulart are still commanding that question at all — nearly two decades after they first walked the Victoria's Secret runway, in an industry that typically discards women before they hit 30.
Both are currently making the European summer circuit rounds, Ambrosio photographed in Mykonos and Goulart maintaining her perennial presence in Saint-Tropez. The images circulating this week could be mistaken for archival material from 2010, which is precisely the point.
The economics of supermodel persistence
The traditional modeling career arc is brutal and brief: discovery at 15, peak earning years from 18 to 25, graceful pivot to "brand ambassador" roles or quiet retirement by 30. Ambrosio and Goulart have defied this trajectory so thoroughly that they've essentially created a new category — the legacy supermodel who refuses legacy status.
Ambrosio, 45, left Victoria's Secret in 2017 after 17 years as an Angel. Rather than fading into wellness-brand partnerships, she launched Gal Floripa, a swimwear line with her sister and best friend, and maintained a modeling schedule that would exhaust women half her age. Goulart, 40, has been engaged to German goalkeeper Kevin Trapp since 2018 and could easily have retreated into WAG anonymity. Instead, she remains one of the most-booked Brazilian faces for European luxury campaigns.
What the algorithm cannot replicate
The fashion industry's current obsession with "nepo babies" and TikTok-famous faces has created a curious vacuum. The new generation brings followers; the legacy generation brings something harder to quantify — the credentialed glamour that comes from having actually worked the Victoria's Secret runway when it was the most-watched fashion event on American television.
Brands casting for aspirational luxury, particularly in swimwear and resort collections, have discovered that a 22-year-old with 4 million followers cannot project the same thing as a woman who has been photographed on beaches for two decades and still looks like she belongs there. It's not youth they're selling; it's the fantasy of permanent summer.
Our take
The comparison game — who wore it better, who aged more gracefully — misses the genuine achievement here. Ambrosio and Goulart have outlasted the entire business model that created them. Victoria's Secret's fashion show is dead. The Angel concept has been retired and revived and muddled beyond recognition. The Brazilian supermodel pipeline that once seemed inexhaustible has slowed to a trickle as the industry chases different demographics. And yet here they are, still in bikinis, still in the frame, still working. In an industry built on disposability, persistence is its own form of victory.
