My life as a mixed race model in Northern Ireland
A short 7 months ago I got mixed into the world of fashion, designers, makeup, hair and modelling – only after living in Northern Ireland for 4 years.
I find that there is a tendency to need to label things and people universally, so when I turn up to a shoot with my semi-afro hair and caramel skin tone it throws people off course a bit! Much to my enjoyment.
I couldn’t count the number of times I’ve had “you’re the first mixed skin person I’ve worked with before” and in all honesty, I love it. I love being unique, I love being a new look for most, I love to see the confusion on the poor hair stylists face when they’re trying to work out how they’re going to go about tackling my halfrican hair. It’s great, I couldn’t say anything bad!
Of course, growing up it wasn’t so easy trying figure out my identity- am I black or am I white? But now, with the strong family reinforcement of acceptance and reassurance that I am what I am and I’m perfect just the way I am, I’ve grown to embrace my mixed culture heritage; it isn’t bad having crazy African parties mixed with conventional English traditions of tea with everything- who could complain?
The NI fashion scene is actually a rather vast and ever expanding collection with the alternation between Spring/Summer and Autumn/Winter it’s so exciting to watch it all unfold!
I personally love fashion weeks, both here at the Belfast fashion week and tracking them in the big cities worldwide. It’s just so interesting monitoring how the events progress and notice how what happens in those weeks effect the rest of the world.
This year it would seem that more wearable yet still highly fashionable trends have came out like florals, metallics, sports luxe and monochrome in Northern Ireland; complying very much to shows in London fashion week like Topshop Unique and Burberry.
I have been in contact with many amazing designers in Northern Ireland that are so passionate about their work which really reinstates the point of how the fashion scene locally is growing at such a rapid speed, perhaps there will be an end to the farmer boiler suits and muddy wellie look yet!
From the eyes of our
last issue's cover girl