AWENG AND LEXY ADE-CHUOL ON OVERCOMING LIFE’S OBSTACLES AS A PAIR
SHE’S THE SOUTH SUDANESE SUPERMODEL WHO REFUGEE WENT FROM A CAMP TO BILLBOARDS ACROSS THE WORLD. BUT FAME AND SUCCESS HAVEN’T ALWAYS BEEN EASY FOR Aweng Ade-Chuol… UNTIL SHE FELL IN LOVE
“I’VE MET MANY beautiful people. BUT AFTER I SAW LEXY, I ANNOYED THE SUGAR OUT OF HER until she gave me HER NUMBER”
NOT EVERY MODEL WILL START A CONVERSATION by telling you how much they love First World War poet Wilfred Owen. But not every model is Aweng Ade-Chuol, the Sudanese supermodel who was spotted working at McDonald’s. When we meet, she sinks her sparrow-like, 5ft 9in frame into a low armchair, flanked by her wife of a less than a year – Alexus, known as Lexy – and explains.
‘It’s such a nerd thing to say but he’s always been my favourite poet,’ she says, her dark, almond-shaped eyes brightening above her paper mask. ‘His poetry is just phenomenal to me. It’s all about war and my father was a soldier… Maybe that’s why I love him so much,’ she says, speaking with an accent that blends cutesy Australian lilt with a heavy New York brusqueness. (Aweng and her family were granted asylum to Sydney in 2OO6, and she has spent the past year in Long Island with Lexy, a native New Yorker.)
Aweng’s passion for historical poetry is not just a sentimental link to her own past, though her father did fight in Sudan’s civil war and died of an infected gunshot wound in 2O13. It’s part of an insatiable appetite for learning, which is wrapped up in the 22-year-old’s enthusiasm for stretching the most out of her life. ‘I like reading, writing, I like learning something new. I like adventure, I like date nights and dinners out… I like living,’ she says, her eyes darting around the room with every statement. ‘I feel like your bedroom should be for resting, when you’re exhausted from living.’
For the past three years, Aweng has been doing a lot of living. She was scouted at 16 while living in a South Sudanese community in Sydney with her mother and 11 younger siblings. The family had emigrated there from Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya, where they’d settled after fleeing the conflict in Sudan. Kakuma is well-known in fashion circles, since it’s the place where models Halima Aden and Adut Akech were also raised.
With distinctive facial scars and cheekbones as high as The Shard, Aweng always knew she was beautiful, but it was in her late teens that she realised just how striking she was. When she was 18, studying for a law degree at university, she followed up on a business card thrust across the McDonald’s counter by a well-dressed woman who said: ‘You’re going to be a superstar. You’ll thank me one day…’
What happened next is fashion folklore, as she followed in the footsteps of Natalia Vodianova and fellow South Sudanese model Alek Wek, whose lives were also transformed after chance encounters. Within two weeks, Aweng was flown to Paris, where she walked exclusively for Vetements, one of the biggest shows in the fashion calendar. That night, there was no going to parties to celebrate, as Aweng rushed back to her hotel room to finish a law assignment, not wanting to completely let go of her previous life. The next day, she woke to the news that she’d been signed by agencies in Paris, Milan, New York and London.