Drum: IN FOCUS
“There were like 9 of us, and most of us were quite
young, but we always felt safe because of her courage
and how much she held it together.”
As a 14 year-old Dinka girl, life in England was initially
bewildering, but it turned out to be a key period in
the young Alek’s life. After three tries, her mother
and two other siblings were also granted asylum,
and the Wek family began to re-group. Alek learnt
English quickly, and went on to study fashion
technology and business at the London College of
Fashion, before her ‘big break’, being signed up by
Models One. And despite having lived in New York
for the past 5 years, she still feels very connected to
London.
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However, she is uncompromising – almost
unfashionably so – in her expectation that those
who are given the chance that she had should attack
it with the same vigour:
“If somebody could at least give these people that
chance, they could come and be very hardworking
citizens, not just sitting on their backsides”, she says
forcefully.“I have never been on benefit after leaving
my teenage years. I was waking up every morning for
9 months cleaning up at the BBC, I was going to a
hairdresser on the weekend, I worked in a supermarket for a little bit. Once you understand that
work ethic, you can be really independent, and that
is so powerful.”
“Alek has brought an uncompromising, undiluted Afro-centric
beauty into the world of high fashion. Rich, dark, almost blueblack skin; rounded, cherubic features; short, natural, Afro hair,
she has said before,“I look like any other Dinka girl from the
Sudan.”
“Oh definitely, London is like my second home.
London is very special to me: that’s where I really
got to spread my wings and become a teenager. At
first I felt like ‘Oh God, maybe I’m a little bit different’,
but as you grow up you realise – it’s not about
messing around and wasting time, it’s really about
educating yourself and that’s so powerful…”
That’s Alek in a nutshell – the two things that have
been intrinsic to her success. The fact that she is a
little different – and that relentless, unyielding work
ethic. As a former asylum seeker herself, she is
forthright in her defence of a system that has given
her and thousands like her a chance to build a new
life, and is scathing of those who decry it:
“That’s why there are such words as ‘refugee’ and
‘refuge’ – because always there’s going to be somewhere where people are not treating civilians right,
to a stage where people are losing their lives…”
It’s this work ethic that has allowed her to stride to
the summit of an industry that – regardless of its
pretensions to boundary-pushing and non-conformism
– remains overwhelmingly conservative in its notion
of ‘beauty’. Alek has brought an uncompromising,
undiluted Afro-centric beauty into the world of high
fashion. Rich, dark, almost blue-black skin; rounded,
cherubic features; short, natural, Afro hair, she has
said before,“I look like any other Dinka girl from the
Sudan”.
We will have to take her at her word on that one,
but her ‘any other Dinka girl’ look is one that divided
the fashionista from day one. Alek found early success
in London, and persuaded her mother to let her fly
out to the United States and take her chances on the
New York fashion scene. It was the chance to fulfil a
dream, but meant that mother and daughter were to
be parted again.»