Linda Evangelista has said she “didn’t do anything wrong” after having a cosmetic procedure called CoolSculpting.
The 58-year-old Canadian fashion model previously said the treatment left her “permanently deformed” and “brutally disfigured”.
Reflecting on the rare side effect of cryolipolysis, she told the Sunday Times: “I don’t blame myself any more. I’m not hard on myself any longer.
“And how people feel about me still bothers me a little bit, but it used to bother me a lot. I know now that I didn’t do anything wrong.
“For the longest time I thought I did. I’m not completely rid of it, but I work hard at getting rid of the guilt and the shame and I’m not letting it ruin my life. I wouldn’t have stayed locked up if I’d known how many people cared.”
A lawsuit in New York against Zeltiq Aesthetics, CoolSculpting’s parent company, was previously settled by Evangelista.
She says she developed paradoxical adipose hyperplasia, where the fatty tissue on her body increased in size rather than shrank, because of the procedure.
Cryolipolysis, a popular fat-freezing treatment, cools the fat so that frozen, dead fat cells can be excreted out of the body through the liver.
Evangelista, one of the most famous faces of the 1990s fashion industry, also said she no longer looks at mirrors or dates.
She added: “My son will say to me sometimes, ‘You might want to know that you have a pimple on your chin.’ And I’m like, what? But life is better without mirrors.”
Evangelista previously disclosed that the father of her son Augustin James is French businessman Francois-Henri Pinault, the chief executive of Kering, which owns luxury goods such as Gucci and Balenciaga.
Mr Pinault is married to Mexican-born actress Salma Hayek.