Anok Yai insists she’s “not your average person.” That may seem obvious, given she’s one of the most successful models working, but Yai says there’s something else that sets her apart. “I’m very dark,” she says, peering over her Prada shades. “I’m obsessed with knife-fighting. I love edgy movies—I’m obsessed with the Joker. When I started modeling, the industry wanted me to be the cute, bubbly, happy girl who’s just a ball of joy—that’s really not me.”
Subverting people’s expectations is something she’s been doing forever. In middle school, Yai loved putting together eccentric and elaborate looks. “My style was nonsense. I would have themes on certain days. One day, I’d wear all fur—fur boots, a fur jacket, a fur hat, even a fur wallet that had my flip phone in it,” she says. “I’ve always been the person who never cared to try to fit in. Kids always saw that as weird, but now as I grow into myself, I think it’s a special quality that I have.”
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Since becoming a professional model in 2017, Yai has walked for Mugler, Versace, and Saint Laurent; she was also the second Black woman, after Naomi Campbell in 1995, to open a Prada show (at Milan Fashion Week in 2018). She still remembers the day that she told her parents she was dropping out of Plymouth State University, where she was studying biochemistry, to model full-time. “They were really scared,” she says. “My parents were more academic and didn’t know anything about the fashion world. I remember I gave my mom this Fendi bag that Karl Lagerfeld had given me, and she didn’t even know what Fendi was. She was like, ‘Oh, cute.’ And then put it in her room. I don’t know if she’s ever worn it.” But her parents knew that she had always loved fashion, so “they didn’t fight me that hard, but they were definitely terrified,” she adds.
Born in Cairo, Egypt, to South Sudanese parents, Yai and her family immigrated to the U.S. and settled in Manchester, New Hampshire when she was four. As a young girl, she kept to herself. “I struggled a lot with social anxiety,” Yai says. “I was the kid in the corner who didn’t talk to anybody. I never really had a set friend group. I was more of a floater. I was always on the outside looking in.” It also wasn’t easy being a Black girl in a predominantly white area. “Growing up dark-skinned in New Hampshire, there was a lot of racism,” she says. “A lot of kids made fun of me for my skin color.” But she was always able to see beyond her circumstances. “I always knew I was meant for bigger things than the small town that I came from,” she says. “I think that allowed me to feel comfortable with my separation from my peers.”
Today, Yai is reserved, calm, and cool. When we meet at the Brooklyn Museum in early May, she’s in incognito mode—wearing an oversized gray velour Alexander Wang jacket, dark-wash denim, a black beanie, and two layers of silver necklaces. As we walk through one of the museum’s exhibits, “Giants: Art From the Dean Collection of Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys,” Yai slowly moves from piece to piece, stopping every so often to take a photo or to read a description. “I’m getting inspiration for my upcoming art pieces,” she explains.
During the quiet moments in her packed work schedule, she’s returned to her childhood love of painting. “I do oil on canvas mostly,” she says. “I started off doing sketches, but now they’re paintings of the world around me and my friends.” Her paintings have a trademark, she tells me: “I don’t finish the eyes. I like there to be an unsettling quality when you stand in front of them.” (Ever the student, she has a running list in her Notes app of paintings she’s loving at the moment—The Lunatic of Étretat by Hugues Merle; Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan by Ilya Repin; and The Fallen Angel by Alexandre Cabanel). While she keeps her own work close to her chest and only allows a few “very, very, very close friends” to see it, she’s been toying with the idea of putting together an art show. “I just want to release my stuff into the world,” she says.
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So it comes as no surprise that Yai approaches her modeling career with an artist’s sensibility. On shoots, she often offers her opinions on how she should be styled. She even lent her input for the photos that accompany this story. “Mario [Sorrenti, the photographer] and I like super edgy and gritty photos,” she says. “But we didn’t want it to be so dark that it wasn’t ELLE. We still wanted it to be cool.” She loved that the clothes were “sexy and didn’t require that much effort.” As she often does for photo shoots, she created a character in her head whom who she envisioned while modeling the looks: “She’s this woman who’s just effortless. You can’t take your eyes off her, and you can tell she’s not trying that hard.”
The audience can’t take their eyes off Yai, either. Last year, she won models.com’s Model of the Year Award, where she was nominated alongside Bella and Gigi Hadid, Irina Shayk, and Kendall Jenner. And though she’s grateful for the honor (That was really exciting.”), she doesn’t dwell on it. “Recognition doesn’t really drive me—it’s about creating the art,” she says. “But it does put a fire under my ass when I get acknowledgement for the work that I do.”
Amid career achievements and a budding painting career, her social life has taken a back seat. “My friends always drag me because I’m really bad at texting back and answering calls,” she says. “I’m just always on a set or working on something.” Last year proved to be excruciatingly busy. “I killed myself with all the work that I was doing. For three months straight, I was either on a set or in a hotel, and I only came home to repack a new suitcase.”
Through it all, Yai has stayed connected to her truest self—“my love for art and my curiosity”—and discarded the rest. “There are aspects of myself as a child that I keep, but that fear I always had of being judged and not accepted? I let that shit go a long time ago.”
Hair by Lacy Redway; makeup by Aaron de Mey; manicure by Alicia Torello; casting by Michelle Lee Casting; set design by Happy Massee for LaLaLand Artists; produced by Hest Inc.; special thanks to Bernd Goeckler.
A version of this article appears in the August 2024 issue of ELLE.
Juliana Ukiomogbe is the former Assistant Editor at ELLE. Her work has previously appeared in Interview, i-D, Teen Vogue, Nylon, and more.
