Woman of Substance...
ALEK WEK
Listed amongst The Sunday Times’ Rich List, Alek Wek is a woman
in a hurry as Jon Hill found out.
ince being ‘spotted’ in true fairytale style at the
age of 18 – while out shopping with friends in
South London, naturally – the striking, willowy,
Sudanese beauty’s star has not stopped ascending: the
first African model to grace the cover of US Elle in 1997;
MTV Model of the Year in the same year; i-D magazine’s
model of the decade; movie actress; writer; successful
businesswoman. Like I said, a woman in a hurry.
S
And when I phone the New York offices of her company
Alek Wek 1933, she snatches up the receiver, sounding
out of breath.
“Did you call before?” she asks.
“Oh yeah, maybe about 10 minutes ago,” I tell her all
casual, like.“it’s not a problem”.
So much to do, so little time. This is a theme that
continually recurs during our conversation – Wek
has a restlessness and a drive that seems irretrievably
connected to a childhood of peril and uncertainty in
the small Sudanese village of Wau. Born into the Dinka
tribe in the South of the country in 1977, Alek’s childhood was scarred by civil war and religious persecution
(the Dinka are considered un-Islamic by the strict
Muslims of the North), which led her family to flee to
the capital, Khartoum. Her father’s health failed and,
after he died, the Wek family sought a future away
from the troubles of their homeland.
In 1991, Alek and her younger sister were granted
asylum in Britain, joining an older sister who had
settled in London already. This meant leaving behind
her mother, whom Alek refers back to time and again
as being perhaps her greatest inspiration.
Damn, I’m smooth.“Have you been very busy?”
“Yeah, I’ve been away for like three or four weeks –
South Africa, Paris, before that I was in Milan, then
I went to Newport Beach, then I was in Mexico…it’s
just like ‘It’s so much I’ve got to do!’”
“Let me tell you something,” she says, the memory
still fresh.“it was two years before I could see her, and
that was the longest time. I had never been away from
my mother before, yet someway, somehow, I always
thought she was going to save me. »