By
Peter Allen
Last updated at 7:55 AM on 1st July 2009
Fallen supermodel Karen Mulder was arrested in Paris today after allegedly threatening to attack her plastic surgeon.
The 39-year-old is being held at a police station in the French capital following ‘vicious telephone calls’ directed at the female medic.
Dutch-born Mulder, who made her name in the nineties alongside Naomi Campbell, Helena Christensen and Kate Moss, was thought to have asked for a previous operation to be reversed.
Fallen star: Karen Mulder on the catwalk in 1997 (left)
and at a fashion show in Paris earlier this year (right)
A detective said: ‘She was screaming and shouting about the operation and became extremely threatening.
‘There were repeated calls to the female surgeon who was extremely scared. The suspect is being interviewed.’
Mulder was arrested at around 10am and is being kept in a cell in the eight arrondissement, the epi-centre of Paris haute couture.
Ironically, her career began in the same district after winning an Elite model agency talent contest in the 1980s.
Mulder modelled for all the big fashion houses including Chanel, Valentino,
Céline and Versace.
Beauty: Mulder's fresh face and strong bone structure made her one of the stars of the 1990s
Dubbed ‘The Blonde with Class’ by Vogue magazine, she was at one point
earning up to £10,000-a-day before retiring.
Appearances in a Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue and work for the
Victoria’s Secret catalogue made her a household name.
But in 2001 she claimed she and other models had been used as sex slaves by senior politicians and policeman, even falsely claiming she had been raped by Prince Albert of Monaco.
She attended a psychiatric hospital suffering from chronic depression,
blaming it on drug addiction during her modeling days.
A year later she attempted suicide by taking an overdose of sleeping pills and was only saved by friends. She was once a close associate of French first lady Carla Bruni.
In an interview earlier in her career, Mulder said: ‘From the beginning, I hated being photographed.
‘For me, it was just an assumed role, and in the end, I didn't know who I really was as a person. Everybody was saying to me, "Hi, you're fantastic."
'But inside, I felt worse from day to day.’
Mulder has had a turbulent love life. Aged just 20 she married French photographer Rene Bosne but they divorced a few years later.
In 1993 she was engaged to the property developer Jean-Yves Le Fur, but that relationship ended too.
Two years ago Mulder made a brief return to the runway alongside Campbell,
and other supermodel contemporaries including Linda Evangelista and Helena
Christensen.
The model now faces a charge of threatening behaviour, but is likely to be
released today, a source said.
Icon: Mulder (left) with Helena Christensen (centre) and Tyra Banks
