Fashion model

Fashion's face of the moment mixes a high-octane career with quiet activism. So what's Alek Wek really like?

Alek. Her name in the Dinka language means "the black-and-white cow." That's the good-luck cow, explains this tall Sudanese beauty, who shot to superstardom as model of the moment with an empirically African style.

Though marked for good fortune at birth, growing up in southern Sudan the seventh of nine children, Alek (pronounced uh-'lek) Wek hardly thought that at 23 she would be brushing shoulders on the runway with Naomi Campbell and Kate Moss, fitted in the finest clothes by Michael Kors and John Galliano, photographed by Steven Meisel, interviewed by Oprah and gracing the covers of such fashion tomes as Elle. She has done prestigious ad work--a reliable barometer of a model's status--appearing in campaigns for Clinique, Revlon, Joop and Moschino. By any measure, Alek's ascent in the mercurial world of fashion has been nothing short of extraordinary.

Few models are more sought after these days: Alek is often the only sister strolling the runway at international shows. In the five years since a model agent spotted her browsing the stalls at a London market, she has been named Best New Model at the Venus de la Mode Fashion Awards in Paris, MTV Model of the Year in 1997 and Model of the Decade by the trendsetting i-D magazine.

But as mainstream as her success has been, Alek Wek is a maverick. Her stunning ebony face has helped expand the idea of what is beautiful. She has opened the doors wider for Black beauties in fashion and advertising by demanding that industry power brokers work with her Africanness, not against it. When dealing with patronizing makeup artists, for example, she has learned to take charge. "They'll just use their powder," she says in an amused voice, "and sometimes it looks really white and they'll say, `But the contrast is nice. It looks amazing!' And I'm like, `It's not about contrast. Don't even try it.'"

Fashion insiders might have easily marginalized Alek's smoothly rounded features, statuesque physique, richly toned skin and catwalk strut as Grace Jones-Hottentot Venus curiosities. Instead, this self-assured Black woman won them over with her insistence that she be treated with dignity, as more than a caricature. But Alek has her own ideas about what constitutes caricature. Consider her response to the fashion world's propensity to cast Black models as jungle exotics. "I've done the leopard skin; I'm not ashamed of my culture, but it has to be right," she says, reminding us that our self-image as Africans has been so torn and twisted by Western culture that we are afraid representations of our roots are meant to debase us.

This may explain why, despite Alek Wek's many fans, some have had such sharp negative reaction to her look. "Here in America, our beauty standards are totally different because we've been bombarded with so many different images of beauty since coming here," muses Sam Fine, makeup artist to the stars. "Alek has caused women to talk, but the fact that they're talking helps us become more accepting of different beauty standards."

Lawrence Steele, one of a few successful Black designers in Europe, gave Alek the honor of opening and closing his Milan show last fall. "She's the best," Steele says. "There is something exceptional about Alek's beauty. It's a very powerful look, and it has something to do with her personality." Designer Michael Kors agrees: "There are models who are elegant but they have no personality, and there are girls who are full of charm but they're not chic," he says. "Alek is both. There tends to be a sameness among models. But she didn't say, `I'm going to get big breasts.' She didn't say, `I'm going to get extensions.'"

But for Wek, keeping it real has not always been easy. We're in a Manhattan photo studio, and as she waits for Sam Fine to work his magic on her face, I ask her to contemplate her career. "It doesn't matter if I'm Black or White, modeling is hard," she says, a rare frown creasing her baby face. "For me, it's more than just dealing with everyday things like bookings. I have to let them know the reason I don't wear hair is it doesn't look right on me. The battle still goes on. But at least now when they see another Black girl with short hair, they won't say to her, `Why don't you put pieces on?'"

Alek has maintained control of her image in other ways as well. Refusing to be typecast by her color, she declines to answer casting calls for Black models only. She also fights the industry's practice of paying Black models less than their White peers for the same kinds of jobs. "Now my agent asks for the same rate in writing," she says.

As she speaks, I stare into her sincere eyes, catch the white flash of her imperfectly spaced teeth against ebony skin. It occurs to me that though we call ourselves Black, most of us in this hemisphere are not, literally. Alek's skin tone head to toe is a true velvety black-brown. Of her striking features and five-foot, eleven-inch frame, this East African beauty once observed dryly that they're nothing special where she's from.

Aleks' winning mix of girlfriend humility and gravitas owes much, she says, to her mother, a social worker and farmer, and to her father, an education administrator, when she was growing up in Sudan. She remembers warmly her mother's freshly ground peanut butter mixed with honey, her dad's turning over his checks to her mother every month, and morning tea from a big kettle. But then the memories turn cold: At age 12, Alek lost her father, who died after being improperly treated for a broken hip. By then civil war raged in Sudan, as the Muslim north and Christian south battled for political, cultural and religious primacy. "There was shooting in the streets, so you couldn't go out for days in a row," Alek recalled in an interview with Scene magazine. "Sometimes there would be nothing in the market. My mother had to find any way she could to feed us." Two years after her father died, 14-year-old Alek and a younger sister boarded a plane for London, where an older sister was living. After three tries, their mother and two other siblings were finally granted political asylum and allowed to join the sisters. The rest of the family members, relocated to different parts of England, Canada and Australia, have yet to be reunited.

"My mum is the one who brings tears to my eyes," Alek says. "She's so strong. When we left Sudan, she left everything. It wasn't, `Oh, my furniture.' It was just her kids. I would not do anything to embarrass my mum." Alek does not mean stripping for the camera--she is perfectly at ease with her body. Rather, disgracing her mother would mean "I wasn't being true to myself" or "I'm not making my own decisions."

Alek has had plenty of practice staying true to the values her mother instilled. After creating a small buzz in London, she persuaded her mother to let her try out for the big leagues in New York. Already signed by Ford Models, she encountered some very specific rejection when she arrived. "People said I was too black and I'd never get makeup work," Alek recalls. Now with IMG Models, she has proved them all wrong, doing makeup ads for everyone from Revlon to Francois Nars. Her goal now is to land the lucrative cosmetics contract that eludes so many Black models, and that can guarantee a comfortable life.

Alek is also extending her reach beyond modeling. She is writing a book about her life and what it takes to be a supermodel: "You have to have your own strength within," she sums up. And she's already thinking about what she'll turn to when her modeling career is over--writing and acting are two paths she may pursue. But even as she looks ahead, Alek remains acutely conscious of her past: To raise awareness about the 17-year-long civil war in Sudan and the plight of refugees worldwide, she has become a member of the U.S. Committee for Refugees Advisory Council, joining such activists as Chilean author Isabel Allende and Spanish opera star Placido Domingo.

Soft-spoken and graceful, with a tendency to break into rippling laughter, Alek juggles her career and activism with a minimum of fuss. She visits her mother and siblings in London three or four times a year--whenever her work takes her to Europe. And though she pals around with other models, her sisters remain her closest friends. There's also a special man in her life: "I'm seeing someone, yeah," Alek laughs. "I don't want to talk about it, though. I don't want to jinx it."