Alek Wek

“Everything has to do with education: If you educate the girls, you educate the family, the community, and society, in general.”

“When I started, I'd hear other people saying, 'God, she's so bizarre-looking,' because I didn't look like the girl next door. But I was just normal. I was the girl next door. There were people in high fashion I could better relate to who were doing something more interesting and not talking this sort of rubbish.”

“I like unique little boutique hotels, such as Blakes in London.”

“Black girls, I feel, rock, in so many ways, especially coming from five girls.”

“I like to accept it all, the negative and the positive.”

“I used to have nightmares about the civil war when I got to England at ages 14 to 15. It took me some years to get over that.”

“When I first started working with World Vision, I would sit down and talk with them about issues that concern any part of the world. MSF told me about what was going on in North Korea. I also support AIDS and breast cancer charities.”

“My experience as a refugee had made me strong; I could survive anything, even the world of fashion.”

“I have eight brothers and sisters, so I'd like to have a few children.”

“There are mothers who sew for six months to make a fashion collection - someone's grandmother, someone's sister. We come in and get paid to walk for 10 minutes at the end. Whenever I think about that, I realise it's not about me. I was just the one chosen to represent those women and sell the clothes.”

“It was the most exciting thing to leave secondary school and go to college, to have that freedom to study whatever I wanted.”

“London is like my second home. I've still got friends there from school and from when I first started in the modelling business - people such as Karen Elson, Jasmine Guinness, Jade Parfitt.”

“I've seen mothers and children really being vulnerable in the refugee camps; it's supposed to be temporary, but they end up having children who have grown up in refugee camps.”

“In restaurants in my Brooklyn neighborhood, I always ask for a doggie bag to bring the leftovers home.”

“I meet and talk to women from every corner of this planet, and I can find beauty in each and every one of them.”

“War tore my family apart.”

“You can feel very strongly that someone doesn't like you. I think any model who didn't have the same sort of upbringing as me would find that very difficult. But I absolutely knew I was entitled. I never thought I was ugly - it never crossed my mind.”

“Bones inside clothes. That was war to me.”

“The fact that designers like Lagerfeld, Gaultier, Galliano and Dior could believe in Alek made me believe in myself, too.”

“Beauty does not mean one thing but not something else.”