Alek Wek’s 20 years in the modelling industry have seen her bag campaigns and runway appearances for everyone from Balenciaga to Yeezy, Alexander McQueen to Marc Jacobs. Not to mention appearing on the cover of Dazed’s spring/summer 2017 issue with Grace Bol. Now, the model is trying her hand at styling – collaborating with rag & bone on its DIY project.
Given complete creative freedom to do whatever she wanted, Wek was simply given a bag of clothes and a brief to create a series of images. Enlisting her friend to shoot the images, the model wanted to show how the collection has something for everyone. “My style is simple, wearable, but also quite chic – I love feeling high fashion and couture,” she tells us. “Sometimes it’s sporty too though and the collection has everything in there for all of those things.”
Shot around Brooklyn and featuring her dog, Wek wanted to the images to have a relaxed feel, to show her off-duty side when she isn’t sashaying down the runway. “I love cooking, poetry, flowers, yoga, nature, and my dog,” she says. Of course, this is all while juggling a modelling career and her recent appearance in Luca Guadagnino’s remake of Suspiria. “It was an amazing experience, very humbling,” Wek says of her time working on the film. “Tilda Swinton was like a big sister and such a professional. I was so nervous and she just made it such a fun moment.”
Thinking of following in Wek’s supermodel footsteps? Her advice is simple: “Stay in school and get an education first,” she says of fledgeling models under the age of 16. “Make sure you enjoy it, make sure you have a good group of people around that keep you grounded. If you’re in the public eye, you’re going to need to know how to deal with it and if that’ll upset you then maybe modelling isn’t for you.”