Linda Evangelista has posed for her first photos since claiming a cosmetic proceedure left her disfigured.

Once one of the most famous and in-demand supermodels of the 1990s, Canadian Evangelista, 56, lived as a recluse for almost five years.

Last September, she finally revealed the reason why she had disappeared from the public eye in a social media post claiming that she had been left “permanently deformed” after undergoing a fat freezing procedure called CoolSculpting that went wrong.

She told her followers: “I have developed Paradocial Adipose Hyperplasia (PAH). It has not only destroyed my livelihood, it has sent me into a cycle of deep depression, profound sadness and the lowest depths of self-loathing. In the process I have become a recluse.”

PAH is a rare side effect that reportedly affects less than one per cent of CoolSculpting patients, where the freezing process causes the affected fatty tissue to thicken and expand.

That same month Evangelista filed a lawsuit suing CoolSculpting’s parent company, Zeltiq Aesthetics Inc., for $50 million in damages, alleging that she’s been unable to work since undergoing seven sessions of CoolSculpting in a dermatologist’s office from August 2015 to February 2016.

Appearing on the cover of People magazine, Evangelista has given a glimpse at what her body looks like now and opened up further about her nightmare experience.

Evangelista explained to the publication how within three months of having the treatments, she started noticing bulges at her chin, thighs and bra area – the very same areas that she had been looking to shrink.

“I tried to fix it myself, thinking I was doing something wrong,” she said, as she began dieting and exercising more. “I got to where I wasn’t eating at all. I thought I was losing my mind.”

Finally going back to her doctor, she recalled: “I was bawling, and I said, ‘I haven’t eaten, I’m starving. What am I doing wrong?’

Upon being told she had PAH, she said: “I was like, ‘What the hell is that?’ And he told me no amount of dieting, and no amount of exercise was ever going to fix it.”

Devastated by the diagnosis, she said: “I don’t look in the mirror. It doesn’t look like me.”