Although Claudia Schiffer announced last fall that she's "finished with the runway," she's not finished with reminiscing about her catwalk past -- and she does just that in a revealing 11-minute segment on FASHIONAIR, dubbed "The Supermodel Series: Claudia Schiffer."

In the video, the lithe 39-year-old mother-to-be is curled up on a couch recounting her modeling career, which kicked off when she was discovered at 17, dancing with her new boyfriend in a Dusseldorf, Germany, club.

"If I wasn't discovered in that nightclub on that night, I would have never become a model," she tells FASHIONAIR, adding that she hid her new career from her schoolmates.

"I was too embarrassed to say I was going to be a model. So I made up this story in school that I was going to Paris to work for Chanel, Christian Dior, and all of these people," says Schiffer. "They were all really impressed."

The bombshell's first assignment was an underwear shoot for French Elle. Soon after, she snagged the iconic Guess Jeans campaign and the cover of Vogue UK, shot by Herb Ritts. That got Karl Lagerfeld's attention.

"I was in absolute awe of him and had so much respect and admiration for him. It was very exciting -- at the same time, really scary -- going in and meeting him," she says of the Kaiser.

"He said, 'I really would love you to be in the [Chanel] runway shows.' But back then, [models were] more boyish looking and more masculine characters in the way the hair was cut. And the bodies were less curvaceous because it was haute couture, and tailoring was important and nobody wanted to have curviness. So I was very surprised when he said, 'Oh you should be in the show.'"

"I remember telling my agent, 'I never want to do any of the shows because I'm way too shy for this. There's no way I can do it, and it's not worth... the stress.' But because [Lagerfeld] was asking, I couldn't really say no," she says. "It was me walking among girls who were completely different. And I was curvaceous and I didn't know how to walk, and I'd turn completely wrong and take the clothes off at the wrong time. It was all very innocent. And it was a huge success."

To see the rest of the video, which includes rare archival footage and images of Schiffer in her heyday, plus her story about how Patrick Demarchelier finally got her to bare all, visit FASHIONAIR.

Plus, check out these '90s supermodels, including Schiffer, sans makeup.