Linz is where it starts. My mother brought up my brother and me by herself, and not once did she tell me I couldn't. I was three when I did my first campaign, for Stummer. At ten there was a poster in my room: Claudia Schiffer for Guess.
In my twenties every agency gave me the same answer: too curvy for fashion, too slim for plus-size. Put on ten kilos, they said, and do lingerie. I was not willing to change my body to fit a category. I never gave up. I just stopped knocking on those doors.
So I did it myself. A part-time job in social media marketing taught me how to sell a product, and the product I practised on was me. My own comp card, Instagram as my book. The first brand to book me was American. I only ever had a plan A.
Under every picture I posted, I signed: curves by Nadine Mirada. A signature, long before there was a brand. Guess was the dream, and a flight to Los Angeles was more than I could afford. So I wore Guess, tagged Guess, again and again. Until Paul Marciano wrote: if you are ever in LA, come by.
I got there on a flight I won, in Oscar week. A test shoot at the Guess studio, my first picture in black and white. Before I flew home I had a contract. In December my first campaign came out, and the signature changed with it: by Nadine Mirada. All my dreams came true in that city.
Two Marciano by Guess campaigns followed. The Austrian papers called me “the new Claudia Schiffer”, the woman from my poster. In 2020 the Vienna Awards named me Austrian Model of the Year. A cover for L'Officiel, my first story in Harper's Bazaar, YSL Beauty. Guess had become my second family.
Victoria's Secret booked me. In November 2023 the Vienna Awards called my name a second time, and nine days later my own series started on Joyn: Glam by Nadine Mirada. Four episodes, from Vienna to Monaco to the Guess headquarters in Lugano. A show with my name on it.
Paris, on the runway at Haute Couture Week. Cannes, the European Model Influencer Award. Then the cover of ELLE Colombia, a campaign for Palazzo Versace Dubai, and in Vienna my Guess campaign on the side of a bus. I wish my eighteen-year-old self could have seen that.
And if you had told the girl with the poster in her room where this would go, she would not have believed a word. Sometimes I still don't. Then the next thing comes and proves it again. I cannot wait for the one after that.
Marciano by Guess, Spring/Summer: my eighth campaign in a row with the brand that started everything. Rolls-Royce, partner since July. Ten years in front of the camera. What I learned in them, I am passing on now. The Glam Era opens this year.
The work itself is in the Book.