South Sudan – the African country that produces favorite fashion models

Wearing low but chic clothing, flowing braids and dew, no makeup face, Arop Akol looks like your typical model outside of duty.

She sinks into the sofa at the offices of her agency in the UK, First Model Management and details the growing career that has seen her walk for luxury brands in London and Paris.

“I was watching modeling online as I was a child at the age of 11,” says Acle, now in his early twenty years, “BBC told.

For the past three years, she has been surrendered around the world during modeling, even sharing a track with Naomi Campbell in a completely white show.

Traveling to work can become lonely, but Acle constantly encounters models from her home country – the lush but blurred southern Sudan.

“The people of South Sudan have become very well known for their beauty,” says Acil, who has tall cheekbones, rich, dark skin and stands 5 feet 10 inches.

Flying a fashion magazine or scanning tracks on the track track and you will see Akol’s Point – models born and grown in southern Sudan, or those from the significant diaspora of the country are everywhere.

They range from current, such as Akol, to supermodels like Anok Yai, Adut Akech and Alek Wek.

After being screened in a London parking lot in 1995, Wek was one of the first models of South Sudan to find global success. Since then, she has appeared on multiple Vogue covers and has been modeled on the likes of Dior and Louis Vuitton.

And the popularity of models in southern Sudan does not show signs of reduction – leading models of the industry’s platform.com compiles an annual list of the best 50 “future stars” of Modeling and in its latest choice, one of five models has a legacy in South Sudan.

Elsewhere, Vogue included four South Sudan models In his article on “11 young models that will storm the catwalks in 2025.”

“The expectation of what the model should be like – most of the models of South Sudan have it,” says Dawson Day, who runs a fashion Week in South Sudan in the country’s capital, Juba, with a colleague former models of Trisha Nichak.

“They have the perfect, dark skin. They have melanin. They have the height.”

Lucia Yanosova, a casting agent with the first model management, says to the BBC: “Of course they are beautiful … beautiful skin, height.”

However, she says she is not sure why fashion brands are looking for southern Sudan models over other nationalities.

“I can’t tell you because there are many girls who are also beautiful and Mozambique, Nigeria or different countries, right?” Janosova adds.

Oburi, a model of South Sudan, who has worked with designers like Givenchy and Armani, has a theory.

She believes that the Southern Sudanese models are in search not only because of their physical beauty, but also because of their “stability”.

Goy was born in Juba, but as a child she moved to a neighboring Uganda, as Acle and hundreds of thousands of other southern Sudan.

Many fled in the years after 2011, when South Sudan became independent of Sudan.

There were high hopes for the world’s most nation, but only two years later, a civil war broke out, during which 400,000 people were killed and 2.5 million escaped from their homes for places like UgandaS

Although the Civil War ended in five years, the worse waves of violence, natural disasters and poverty mean that people continue to leave.

The fight between government and opposition forces has recently escalated – sparks Fear that the country will return to the Civil WarS

After leaving the war-worn South Sudan for Uganda, Goy’s “biggest dream” was to become a model.

Fantasy became a reality only last year when she was scheduled by agents via Facebook. For her first job, she went to the Italian fashion giant Roberto Cavalli.

“I was super excited and ready for my first season … I was really nervous and frightened, but I said to myself,” I can do it ” – because it was a dream,” Goy says, talking to the BBC from Milan, breaking up for work at the last moment.

But some models of southern Sudan have had more busy trips.

Investigation from a British newspaper the times They found that two refugees living in a camp in Kenya were rejected in Europe, just to be told that they were too malnourished to appear on the track.

After completing modeling jobs, several others have been informed that they owe their agencies thousands of euros – as some contracts say that visas and flights must be paid, usually after the models start making money.

Acil says she has encountered a similar problem. When she was discussed in 2019, the agency in question asked her to branch numerous fees – fees she now knows that agencies usually do not want.

“I was asked for money for registration, money for that. I couldn’t manage all this. I fight, my family is struggling, so I can’t manage all this,” she says.

Three years later, as she lived in Uganda, she was ultimately scheduled by a more remedied agency.

A day that helps South Sudan’s newly built models produce wallets, tells the BBC that some have complained about paying for work in clothes, not money.

Many models also oppose another challenge – their family’s perception of choosing a career.

“They didn’t want it and now they don’t want it,” says Acil, who now lives in London, for his own relatives.

“But we (models) were able to go out and say,” We are (a) a young country. We have to go out there and meet people. We have to do things that everyone else does. “

Day says those who live in urban areas have become more open, but some models of South Sudan have likened prostitution.

The parents question the whole concept – wondering why their daughters will “go before people,” he says.

A day remembers a young woman who was helping, who was going to take off for her first international work. Unhappy that she would model, the woman’s family followed her to the airport and prevented her from getting on the plane.

But, she says day, the woman’s relatives eventually appeared and since then she has been modeling a brand of top underwear.

“This girl is actually a family carrier. She takes all her siblings to school and no one talks about it as a bad thing,” he says.

He is “proud” when he sees this model – others from South Sudan – on the global stage, and although industrial cycles during the trends, the day does not believe that models of South Sudan will go out of style.

Goy agrees, saying he has a “growing demand for diversity” in fashion.

Acle also believes that South Sudan is here to stay, saying: “Alec WEK does it before it is born and she is still doing it now.

“The models in South Sudan will go a long way.”