Caitriona Before Claire: Highlights from the Outlander Star’s Life in Fashion

Junya Watanabe, fall 2000 ready-to-wear

Photo: Condé Nast Archive

For fans of Outlander, the historical romance TV series based on the books by Diana Gabaldon, the name Caitriona Balfe conjures a fictional character. That’s Claire Beauchamp Randall Fraser, a nurse who travels back through time to the 1800s where she faces challenges with strength and ingenuity while falling into a passionate romance. As Claire, Balfe is engaged in what she calls “a grand metaphysical love story,” one that’s worlds away from her stint as a fashion model in the 2000s.

In 1999 Balfe, then 19, was studying drama in Dublin when she was scouted while collecting money for charity. Soon she had shelved her books and grabbed a ticket to Paris. Left to navigate unfamiliar terrain, she charted it with an aplomb Claire might approve of. “I have a great knack of not thinking about things and just going for it,” the actor told Backstage magazine in 2015. “If an opportunity presents itself and it seems like a good idea, I’m just like, ‘OK, let’s do it, then I’ll figure it out.’ ” And she did.

Fair and dark-haired with a slender frame, Balfe was opposite in type to the Brazailian ideal popular at the time (hello, Gisele Bündchen), but that worked to her advantage and she became a favorite of designers as different as Ann Demeulemeester and Valentino, Alexander McQueen and Narciso Rodriguez. “She’s the kind of woman that you dream of,” says the latter of Balfe, who he called muse. “She was quite poised.., and always grounded, and smart, and funny, and knew where she was heading.”

The Irish edition of the Independent dubbed Balfe “officially Ireland’s first supermodel,” to which Balfe retorted: “Let’s hope it’s not on my tombstone.” Now that she’s an award-winning actress there’s no danger of that. Outlander, however, has reached its fifth season finale. For all those suffering from series withdrawal, we’ve collected some of Balfe’s best runway appearances. Here, 35 shots from her BC—Before Claire—years.