The Gist
Both Prince William and Claudia Schiffer were in attendance at December 3’s German state banquet at Windsor Castle.
The supermodel wore a black velvet Balmain gown to Wednesday’s event.
It had been 30 years since the two originally met after Princess Diana arranged for Schiffer, Naomi Campbell, and Christy Turlington to surprise a teenage William for his birthday at her home at Kensington Palace.
Princess Diana was hands down the coolest mom ever. Thirty years ago, when her eldest son Prince William was a newly-minted teenager, the late Princess of Wales surprised the future king for his birthday by having supermodels Claudia Schiffer, Naomi Campbell, and Christy Turlington come over to her home, Kensington Palace.
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Prince William and Princess Diana on July 21, 1997
The Prince of Wales and Schiffer reunited again on December 3, when Schiffer was in attendance at the German state banquet at Windsor Castle alongside William and other members of the royal family. Schiffer, who is from Germany, sat next to U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer at the event and wore a black velvet Balmain gown with beading and jewels along its sleeves and midsection. Also in attendance was Schiffer’s husband Matthew Vaughn, who was recently knighted by King Charles this past July—making the supermodel a Lady.
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Claudia Schiffer at the German state banquet on December 3, 2025
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Claudia Schiffer and U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer at the German state banquet on December 3, 2025
Many moons before Wednesday’s banquet, though, Schiffer was part of Diana’s epic surprise for her son, which Campbell recalled in 2020 No Filter with Naomi live chat on YouTube.
“He was coming home from school,” she remembered while speaking with fellow supermodel Cindy Crawford. “And we had gotten there before he had gotten home from school. We were just like, ‘What do we do?’ I mean, it was so sweet.”
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Prince William and Claudia Schiffer at Highgrove on August 3, 2001
In the 2017 documentary Diana, Our Mother: Her Life and Legacy, William said he turned “bright red” during the meetup, adding, “I was probably a 12- or 13-year-old boy who had posters of them on his wall. I went bright red and didn’t quite know what to say and sort of fumbled. I think I pretty much fell down the stairs on the way up. I was completely and utterly sort of awestruck.”
Though embarrassed at the time, he continued, “That’s lived with me forever, about her loving and embarrassing and sort of, you know, being—being sort of the joker.”
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Prince William and Claudia Schiffer on June 27, 2002
William and Schiffer met up again at least two other times—in 2001 at a party at Highgrove, King Charles’s country home, and in 2002 at a polo match, where they shared a kiss on the cheek. It was right around this time that William met his future wife Kate Middleton when both were students at the University of St. Andrews—and the rest, as they say, is history.
Read the original article on InStyle