It’s late afternoon at Kensington’s famously seductive Blakes hotel as a porter knocks on a door at the end of a darkened corridor. Suddenly there’s a string of carnival-esque whoops from within. The door swings open and there is Alek Wek. ‘Oh no, it’s you,’ she screams, laughing, quickly taking cover behind the door. ‘I’m just putting my clothes on!’
There’s no afternoon tryst going on; Wek has just run back to get changed before our interview – she’s on a nine-day trip to London from her home in New York and her schedule is packed. She apologises profusely and we reconvene downstairs 10 minutes later.
Wek, 37, is quite unlike any other supermodel you could meet – immediately open, funny and immensely charming. And extremely relaxed – today she’s in tomboy mode, wearing a white shirt, waistcoat, jeans and a straw trilby – although she quickly asserts her fondness for an evening dress when asked about her MATCHESFASHION.COM shoot, where she modelled seriously glamorous pieces from a roll call of labels including Alexander McQueen, Balenciaga and Dolce & Gabbana. ‘I love getting dressed up to go out – I definitely have a girlie side.’
In 1995, aged 19, Wek was approached by a model scout in a south London park. At the time, she was putting herself through fashion college with a string of jobs, which included cleaning at the BBC. She went to New York, where she ‘pounded the streets’ over one baking hot summer. She was booked to open and close the Ralph Lauren show – a premier spot usually reserved for the world’s top models. Other big shows followed. Within a year of starting out she appeared on the cover of Elle US – the first African model to do so – while iD named her model of the year.
To describe this as a whirlwind trajectory is an understatement. But what came before was even more extraordinary. ‘Sometimes, when I sit back and reflect,’ says Wek, ‘even I can’t believe it.’
Wek was born in South Sudan, one of nine children, but by the age of eight, civil war had broken out. For a while her parents shielded the children from reality and they continued to live their simple but happy lives – there was no electricity or running water but lots of fun and love. But as the war progressed, their daily existence became impossible.
‘The police ran out of ammunition. We were going to the water pump and there would be bodies,’ says Wek. ‘It was scary – when my mum went to fetch something we were thinking, “Will she come back?” Because some of our neighbours didn’t.’ Her family had to leave their village and walk, along with thousands of other members of their Dinka tribe, to find refuge in the bush.
‘It was literally survival, living in the bush with nothing. Thank God it was the rainy season and my parents had the knowledge – they knew which plants were poisonous and which were not.’ Wek’s father was very sick by this point, but her mother was endlessly resourceful, selling salt, among other things, to gradually buy passports for the family as they made their way to Khartoum.
‘Whenever I think life is challenging, I step back and think about what my mum went through. You are in the middle of nowhere, there are mosquitoes, people are getting malaria. There’s no hospital, there’s no proper nutrition. She wanted her kids to live.’
One by one the family made it to Khartoum and two years later, aged 14, Wek arrived in London where her sister was already living. Her mother followed two years later, but her father suffered from a stroke and died before he could leave.
Despite only speaking Arabic, Wek embraced her new life in London. ‘I remember reading [children’s] books and I thought, “Am I ever going to read?”’ After six months, she had cracked it. ‘I didn’t want to feel like a victim – for the first time I was somewhere where if you work hard you can make something of yourself.’
She was teased at school, but thanks to her parents she had been instilled with a rock-solid self-belief. Wek and her siblings had been brought up to believe in themselves and never to bring others down: ‘My mother taught us that every day – if we ever put someone down she would tell us to cut it out. It’s about me being me and another woman being herself, just as five girls in my family are all themselves – and that’s what needs to happen in fashion.’
Now a highly successful model signed to international agency Storm Model Management, Wek has been an inspiring trailblazer for many women – earlier this year, the actress Lupita Nyong’o talked about how seeing her on the catwalk made her entirely reassess her own natural beauty. Wek was unaware that she was making such a difference – she was focused on her career. ‘There were no parties, just work. I wasn’t going to waste time.
I bought a place and got my mortgage. I also realised how blessed I was to work with such incredible people,’ most notably with Steven Meisel, Irving Penn, Herb Ritts and Annie Leibovitz, and fronting campaigns for brands from Issey Miyake and Moschino to H&M and Benetton. She launched her own bag collection in 2001 and throughout her career has continued painting and designing. But she also realised that fashion would provide a very public platform to raise awareness for refugees. ‘As soon as I got into fashion, I started to share my story. There are thousands that are still going through this, yet it’s just small soundbites in the news.’ Most recently she has become a goodwill ambassador for the UNHCR (the UN High Commissioner for Refugees).
And just as Wek’s parents instilled the importance of education in her, children are central to her campaigning work. ‘When I went back to South Sudan for the one-year anniversary of independence, I saw so many little Aleks. Give them sports, music, the arts and it will help them excel in so many other areas. And that’s what the country needs. There are challenges, of course, but there is hope.’
Having recently started a new relationship, Wek’s thoughts are turning to children of her own and possibly even a move back to London. ‘I think it’s time – I am thinking about a family and spending more time with my mum, because she’s getting older as well.’ Although she can’t picture too many little Aleks running around: ‘My mum had nine of us! I can’t imagine.’
