Supermodel Alex Wek has graced the catwalks of Chanel and Galliano, but her early life was marked by hardship growing up in Sudan.You can see exactly why an alert scout collared her in a park in South London when she was 18, with the classic "you shall go to the ball" line, "Have you ever thought of modelling as a career?" Well, no, Alek hadn't.
In the first place because she had suffered from psoriasis (a skin condition) from infancy until she landed in England, aged 14, an exile from the Sudanese civil war, shivering in her one cotton dress and flip-flops.
(Perhaps because of the damp climate, her crippling 'lizard skin' condition cleared up almost overnight.)
And, secondly, she'd already seen too much hardship and grief - too much real life - to be impressed by glossy magazine glamour. But once she decided to give it a go, glamour engulfed her anyway.
She has modelled for everyone from Galliano to Chanel. Her covers include American Elle, her adverts Nars, Clarins and Revlon. Alek: Sudanese Refugee to International Supermodel is the title of her new autobiography and it accurately sums up her story.
She has a toothy smile and genuine warmth; you'd have to be as sour as a dehydrated lemon not to like her. We are meeting in New York, in Brooklyn, close to where she now lives.
Though terrified by the Western practice of mortgaging, she obtained stability for the first time since she was a small child by buying a house here. After the purchase, Alek's redoubtable mother, Akuol, set forth to visit her, from Kilburn, North London.
"She came to bless the house but I know her: it was to see what community I was living in.
"Was it safe? She doesn't like travelling but she said, 'I am coming, OK?'
"Now all my neighbours ask, 'When is she coming back?'" A big chuckle.
Alek, now 30, was the first black model who didn't conform to a Caucasian aesthetic, the first with an uncompromising, sub-Saharan beauty. She belongs to the Dinka tribe and grew up in a small town called Wau in the south of the Sudan, the seventh of nine children.
"I thought we were middle class," she says, of her upbringing in a two-bedroom house without electricity or running water.
"But now, considering what middle class is in the West - wow! We were poor!"
She talks about her parents with huge affection. "My father made sure of discipline but my mum, she was serious business." Her 6ft 5in father, a civil servant, treated his womenfolk with a respect often lacking in African machismo, and promoted his daughter's confidence. "He walked me to school on my first day and I knew it was a special day because I had never gone somewhere just me and him."
But her sense of security crumbled in the war.
"It put people against each other. Suddenly, you couldn't look at your neighbour in the same way." She reaches for a Dinka metaphor, "It's like, one bad onion makes the whole sack smell awful.
"From nine years old, I lived with fear. I saw our neighbours disappearing.
"I was scared that I would come home from school and my parents would not be there. I still have dreams in which someone is coming to the door."
Teenage militias roared through the town, looting and killing as they blasted Michael Jackson's Thriller from their speakers. Bodies lay in the grass and rotted.
"Bones inside clothes. That was war to me."...
For Full Article...
In the first place because she had suffered from psoriasis (a skin condition) from infancy until she landed in England, aged 14, an exile from the Sudanese civil war, shivering in her one cotton dress and flip-flops.
(Perhaps because of the damp climate, her crippling 'lizard skin' condition cleared up almost overnight.)
And, secondly, she'd already seen too much hardship and grief - too much real life - to be impressed by glossy magazine glamour. But once she decided to give it a go, glamour engulfed her anyway.
She has modelled for everyone from Galliano to Chanel. Her covers include American Elle, her adverts Nars, Clarins and Revlon. Alek: Sudanese Refugee to International Supermodel is the title of her new autobiography and it accurately sums up her story.
She has a toothy smile and genuine warmth; you'd have to be as sour as a dehydrated lemon not to like her. We are meeting in New York, in Brooklyn, close to where she now lives.
Though terrified by the Western practice of mortgaging, she obtained stability for the first time since she was a small child by buying a house here. After the purchase, Alek's redoubtable mother, Akuol, set forth to visit her, from Kilburn, North London.
"She came to bless the house but I know her: it was to see what community I was living in.
"Was it safe? She doesn't like travelling but she said, 'I am coming, OK?'
"Now all my neighbours ask, 'When is she coming back?'" A big chuckle.
Alek, now 30, was the first black model who didn't conform to a Caucasian aesthetic, the first with an uncompromising, sub-Saharan beauty. She belongs to the Dinka tribe and grew up in a small town called Wau in the south of the Sudan, the seventh of nine children.
"I thought we were middle class," she says, of her upbringing in a two-bedroom house without electricity or running water.
"But now, considering what middle class is in the West - wow! We were poor!"
She talks about her parents with huge affection. "My father made sure of discipline but my mum, she was serious business." Her 6ft 5in father, a civil servant, treated his womenfolk with a respect often lacking in African machismo, and promoted his daughter's confidence. "He walked me to school on my first day and I knew it was a special day because I had never gone somewhere just me and him."
But her sense of security crumbled in the war.
"It put people against each other. Suddenly, you couldn't look at your neighbour in the same way." She reaches for a Dinka metaphor, "It's like, one bad onion makes the whole sack smell awful.
"From nine years old, I lived with fear. I saw our neighbours disappearing.
"I was scared that I would come home from school and my parents would not be there. I still have dreams in which someone is coming to the door."
Teenage militias roared through the town, looting and killing as they blasted Michael Jackson's Thriller from their speakers. Bodies lay in the grass and rotted.
"Bones inside clothes. That was war to me."...
For Full Article...
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