Bianca Balti has, according to Karl Lagerfeld, a ‘butt like a goddess’. Speaking to New York Magazine in a piece to publicise the 50th aniversary of Pirelli calendar, 29-year-old Balti, who is also in possession of pretty spectacular lips and cheekbones, said: ‘I have not done one exercise in my whole life … Karl Lagerfeld wanted me [for the 2010 Pirelli calendar, which he shot] because he thought the other girls were too fit … He told me I had a butt like a goddess, and that I shouldn’t ruin it!’

So what does a goddess’s bottom look like? Well, it’s quite small – everyone knows that Karl saves his praise for the slim – with the hips measuring 34.5 inches according to Balti’s London agency Storm. It’s round and curved though, and looks great in little white shorts in close proximity to David Gandy, as seen in one of Balti’s most prominent campaigns, the Dolce & Gabbana Light Blue advert. It’s not a rock-hard bottom like that of Karlie Kloss – Kloss’s bum seems to be moulded from marble as hard as that used in the sculpture of The Three Graces, which depicts Zeus’s daughters, above – but rather it looks like it might genuinely jiggle if prodded.   

Following Karl’s command that she should not exercise lest she ruin her deity-like derrière, Balti kept her preparation for this year’s Pirelli shoot, which also stars Miranda Kerr, Alek Wek and Helena Christensen, to a minimum, telling the magazine that her regime consisted of just shaving her legs and procuring a pedicure from ‘someplace down the street’.