Here’s How Anok Yai Walked Her Way To The Top At The Model Of The Year 2025 Award

Years went by, but every fashion brat worth their front-row seat was waiting for this moment. The British Fashion Council finally made it official — Anok Yai is the Model of the Year 2025. No suspense. No shortlist. No drama. Just pure inevitability. The Fashion Awards this year will light up London’s Royal Albert Hall on the first of December, but let’s be honest, her coronation started months ago.

In a small town in Cairo, to South Sudanese parents and raised with quiet ambition, there was a star being born, gracing her roots with pride, followed by every floor she walked on. Every campaign she conquered, every cover she owned, every show she closed, it all built to this moment. There was no race. There was only Anok.

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The Formula 

Long before she was turning heads at Paris Fashion Week, Anok Yai was buried in biochemistry textbooks, dreaming of a white coat. Her life was supposed to unfold in a different way but destiny and one perfectly lit photograph had something else in mind.

Thank god for Howard University’s 2017 homecoming — one click from a street photographer, and there was the internet's new obsession, and Anok? Had a digital queue of modeling agencies trying to claim her. Her parents weren't exactly thrilled, as she says but hey, whose are? Sometimes the universe doesn’t knock, it posts.

The Rise Of An Icon

Anok Yai launched in the fashion orbit like an unplanned missile. In 2018, she made history as the first Sudanese model and only the second Black woman ever (after the incomparable Naomi Campbell) to open a show for Prada. The moment broke the internet and cracked fashion’s glass ceiling in six-inch heels. A dark-skinned African woman leading one of the world’s most exclusive catwalks? Everyone sat up a little straighter.

In the seasons that followed, the lady became every designer’s dream: sleek, magnetic, and utterly untouchable. She opened Ferragamo with her sculptural grace, closed Ralph Lauren and Fendi like a queen sealing her own legend, and sent flashbulbs into a frenzy at Coperni, Versace, Boss, and Valentino. By the time she floated down runways for Balmain, McQueen, Chanel, and Louis Vuitton, it was clear that she was the prettiest in the room.

Her campaign lineup? A who’s who of modern fashion luxury — Estée Lauder, Messika, Burberry, Givenchy, and that’s just Tuesday for her. Her face rolls a perfect harmony of softness and strength, has become a mood board in itself. Her walk? A masterclass in quiet power — pride, dominance, and don’t-even-think-about-blinking.

A Crown Well Deserved

So why does she deserve the title? Because Anok Yai has been deserving it all along. She’s the kind of model who transcends the frame, not born into fashion royalty, not carried by famous last names, not part of the industry’s endless noise. She built this on her own. No shortcuts, no scandals, no safety net — just raw, relentless talent.

Herbegan far from the runways — in the small, sun-drenched corners of Cairo, raised by South Sudanese parents who taught her the morals that every house does. Every step she’s taken since has been proof of that. Her beauty isn’t loud or; it’s the kind that stops time.

She didn’t get here to prove anything. She got here because she’s extraordinary. The industry didn’t crown her out of courtesy; it finally recognised the power that’s been undeniable from the start. As a non-western, standing at the top of a world that wasn’t built for her, Anok took charge. She is beauty in its truest form: earned, unshaken, and entirely her own.

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So when the British Fashion Council announced her as Model of the Year 2025, no one gasped. We just smiled and said what everyone was already thinking: finally. She didn’t reach for the crown. The world simply placed it where it always belonged — right on her head.

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