Linda Evangelista, 57, triumphantly returns to the catwalk after 15 years of absence

Linda Evangelista made her triumphant return to modeling after a six-year absence due to an adverse reaction to a fat freezing procedure that she says has disfigured her face.

And on Friday, at the start of New York Fashion Week, the Canadian stunner made her first runway appearance in 15 years when she attended the star-studded Fendi show at Manhattan’s Hammerstein Ballroom.

Before the big event, the longtime catwalk queen also posed for the photo used to promote the 25th anniversary celebration of the brand’s iconic Baguette bag.

The luxury Italian fashion house debuted its surprise collaboration with designer Marc Jacobs.

One by one the garments came out of the new collections that brought together two powers in the sector: Jacobs and Kim Jones, the artistic director of Fendi women’s clothing, whose curriculum includes the collaboration with Louis Vuitton.

Creating drama as the minutes went by, Evangelista took to the runway towards the end of the show in a Tiffany blue taffeta gown, according to Footwear news.

With her dark tresses pulled back from the face in an elegant look, she exuded the poise and charm that brought her to the top of the industry in the years following her debut in 1984.

In an added touch of high-class style, Evangelista had a Baguette bag with silver patterns under her right arm and matching silver gloves that reached up to her elbows.

From the looks and sounds of the reaction of those present and his colleagues on stage, his return to the catwalk after 15 years was a resounding success.

And for a woman who has literally been in solitary confinement for six years, this must be a huge confidence boost.

In a Vogue video posted on YouTube, the model gave fans a new look at herself after a lengthy recovery from an allegedly rare reaction to the fat freezing procedure known as CoolSculpting.

The surgery was designed to shrink her fat cells, but instead enlarged them, causing them to develop “bulges” all over her body, due to a condition called paradoxical fat hyperplasia.

PAH is a rare adverse effect of cryolipolysis, which has been reported in 0.0051% of the 1.5 million CoolSculpting procedures performed worldwide.

She has since undergone two liposuction surgeries in an effort to fix the problem and in February she announced that she had stopped living in “shame”.

During the video Evangelista explained that she is still “trying to love herself” after becoming “so depressed” following the wrong procedure.

Before Friday’s runway show, Evangelista’s last runway appearance was in 2007, when she attended the Christian Dior brand’s 60th anniversary runway show.

Along with Evangelista, the so-called Big Six of modeling in the 1990s included Claudia Schiffer, Naomi Campbell, Kate Moss, Cindy Crawford, and Christy Turlington.

Fendi is among the more than 140 designers who will go up to Manhattan over the next six days, until Wednesday 14 September, with the new collections.