Karolina wears the IWC Portofino Midsize Automatic Moon Phase in white gold with diamonds 

Let’s put on some music. Let’s dance,” exclaims Karolina Kurkova as soon as I enter her suite at the Mandarin Oriental, Geneva. Her boundless energy and joie de vivre are disarming, at odds with her long-limbed, statuesque figure and cascading blonde mane that’s graced countless magazine covers, designer campaigns and the Victoria’s Secret runway. But it’s that million-dollar smile that captures the imagination; it’s an open and friendly smile, devoid of airs and graces and of an arrogance that one would expect from one of the world’s top supermodels. 

She may have retired her angel wings a few years ago, but she is still active on the circuit, having recently appeared in Giuseppe Zanotti’s spring/summer 2015 campaign. She now calls Miami home, where she and husband, producer Archie Drury, bring up their five-year-old son Tobin.

Today, a chilly January morning during the Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie fair, this friend of IWC Schaffhausen shows her impeccable fashion chops in a black sequinned Haney cocktail dress paired with vertiginous Christian Louboutin heels and, of course, an IWC Portugieser timepiece.

She admits that prior to meeting the brand’s CEO Georges Kern three years ago in New York, she was not familiar with the world of watchmaking. Karolina and her husband instantly hit it off with the charismatic Kern, who has a knack of attracting and bringing together the world’s top celebrities.

“My husband and I admire and respect the work Georges is doing, the vision he has and how he works. We’ve been lucky to get to know him not just on a business level, but as a person and also his family. We’ve started working together since then; it’s been very organic, smooth and authentic.

“Through IWC, I have a whole new understanding of watchmaking. I appreciate this amazing quality product. It’s not mass-produced—it’s really what people at IWC do with their hands.”

Her role as friend of the brand means that she has access to a trove of watches, but Karolina has a penchant for the bigger, masculine watches. “I love it when a woman wears men’s things—it’s very sexy. It’s not for every woman, you need to have a strong personality and a sense of who you are in order to be able to carry it off,” she says.

This sense of confidence was evidently what attracted Anna Wintour, editor-in-chief of the US edition of Vogue, to the then 15-year-old Czech model. She first appeared in the magazine in 1999, and graced the cover a mere two years later. 

Having ruled the runways at the top fashion weeks for over 10 years, Karolina is now turning her focus on another aspect of the camera: acting. She has appeared in My Sexiest Year, and G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra. In 2013, she joined fellow supermodels Naomi Campbell and Coco Rocha on The Face, a reality-TV show for aspiring models.

“I am continuing to do more TV and exploring a little bit of acting: As a young girl, I’d always loved theatre and music, so maybe I was meant to come back to that.” 

Still, humanitarian work remains a priority for Karolina. She is a regular on the fundraiser circuit, and has worked closely with charities including Global Youth Action Network and Beautiful Life Fund to raise funds for the welfare of children. She says, “Sharing and giving back doesn’t just happen at fundraisers. It happens, for each one of us, in our everyday lives. It starts in your own environment, who you are as a person and what you’re giving to the world, how you treat other people and how you talk to them. Making the world a better place starts with each of us.”