Advoa Aboa: Supermodel and activist who changed the rules of the game
Advoa Aboa on the cover of British Vogue and Dazed. Advoa Aboa in the Pirelli calendar. Advoa Aboa at the award of the British Fashion Council Fashion Awards - and takes there the award "Model of the Year", beating around the sharp turns of the sisters Hadid. Many have not really figured out how to deal with an unusual name for the Russian ear, but it sounds more and more often. We tell about a special way of a special model.
Literally in one year Advo broke into the front ranks of the fashion industry. This is not an instant success, which dreaming models and their ambitious agents. This is not the story of Kaiya Gerber, who suddenly burst into applause in four fashionable capitals, is already sixteen soloing on the cover of French Vogue and composing a joint capsule collection with Karl Lagerfeld. Advoa and a newcomer something not to call. And she, in the end, not sixteen, but twenty-five - by the standards of the model business, which still plays according to archaic rules, success came to her late.
Now it is curious to recall that, for example, in 2010, Advoa and her best friend Cara Delevingne — not very well known at the time (Cara “shoots” a few months later, signing a contract with Burberry) —with Kate Moss, they were filmed in a video released exactly to the beginning of the sale of the so-called final supermodel collection for Topshop. All this was more than a good idea for an aspiring model in the pre-instagram era, but it was far from real excitement. How did it happen that the past year passed under the auspices of Advoa - and that this one will surely pass too?
As they say in such cases, there are nuances: Camilla Lowther, the mother of the girl, is regularly included in the top five hundred most influential people in The Business of Fashion industry, the founder of CLM, representing photographers like Jurgen Teller and Tim Walker; Papa Charles Aboa is a specialist in the selection of places for all the same fashionable shootings. Not that Advo’s first successes in the model field were necessarily tied to her background and connections, but it’s impossible to completely discount them. Even the new editor-in-chief of the British Vogue, Edward Enninful, who decided to decorate the cover of his first issue with the portrait of Advo, admits in a letter to the editor that he has been familiar with it for a long time and remembers it as a six-year old. A good advantage over other girls applying for the main shooting of the magazine.
Aboa signed a contract with the London-based agency Storm in traditional for models sixteen, and in February of 2009 she made her debut in the show of British designer Giles Deacon. The style.com, which had not yet died at that time, could not even correctly spell the name of the young model, and she apparently was ashamed to dictate by letter - and as a result, instead of "Adwoa", it turned out to be "Adawaoa". Today, journalists have no such misconduct about Aboa.
Since then, Advoa has managed to play for the British and Italian Vogue (for the second - under the strict guidance of Stephen Meisel, who eight years later would photograph it on the cover of Vogue UK), Love, i-D, and became the face of the Benetton advertising campaign. Three or four years Aboa will appear and disappear: the shooting for the American Vogue and the House of Holland brand will be replaced by “absenteeism” of fashion weeks - and vice versa. This puzzle will emerge later, after Advoa opens all the cards in 2016: drug addiction and depression during the school years — an explosive cocktail that at some point even led to an attempt to commit suicide. It was in October 2015, and the model then lay for four days in a coma.
Approximately on the same days, in the editorial office of the Italian Vogue, the portrait of Advoa, shot by Tim Walker, was wrapped on the cover of the December issue - such a strange, if not to say wild, life irony. Strange, perhaps, only that it is from this cover - taken, as you know, not in the best period for the girl - and this large-scale comeback starts. Not meaningful and carefully planned, as is the case with models that temporarily suspended their careers, but formed as if by itself.
Fifteen years ago, the model was required to be trouble-free. From the 90s, Kate Moss played the role of a hooligan, a kind of rock star from the world of fashion, but as soon as she really got into the story, she lit up on a sneaky shot of paparazzi cocaine shots, and this very fashion world coolly removed yesterday's favorite from her friends list. Neither Burberry, nor Chanel did not want to be associated with a model that has been stigmatized by the tabloids. Helping hand? Not in this business.
Today, the request is different. It is not necessary to be trouble-free, but as a person - how else. And it would be good for a person to have not only the bright side, chirping about success and giving thanks to photographers and stylists. Advoa is quite a role model for teenagers: she speaks openly about how she struggled with addiction and depression, how she fought against fears and complexes. Even a short-cut head of the model is not the result of the agent-recommended transfiguration. Sensing a few years ago that her career had stalled, Aboa almost at the root cut off her lush copper hair. It is believed that this was a kind of protest against the industry, where models are usually recommended to grow curls that are universal for filming (and also not to lean on tattoos).
In 2015, before the attempt of suicide, Advoa created GurlsTalk, an online platform for girls like herself: eager for an honest conversation about mental health, sex, life in the era of social networks. The site was not limited to: the online community organically migrated offline - last summer, for example, together with the Coach brand in London, they held a festival with panel discussions and other activities.
Advoa is a feminist, she openly speaks on gender and racial issues. To her, in principle, it is not enough to be only a model: she has repeatedly said that she does not want to be just a “body” in the frame. The fact that she, together with photographer Jürgen Teller, developed the new Burberry campaign, was almost the rule.
And still Advo - the actress. What could be counted as a cliché (attempts to crush Hollywood - a legitimate sequel to a model career), if it were not for the fact that Advoa’s dramatic art was studied in university years, and its first tape - the chamber drama “to.get.her” about five girlfriends who decided to go to the winds - sent to the Sundance in 2011.
Of course, the appearance of the girl also played a significant role in her ascent (and this was where her Ghanaian-English roots affected). In the "girl next door" - no matter what meaning you put into this term - it is not exactly credited. Remember how unusual Kate Moss looked at the time compared to other supermodels? So Advo is a stranger among his own, his own among strangers. The industry is now actively working to destroy the once-established stereotypes, which, among other things, "minimized" the presence of representatives of mixed origin. It is good that now there is at least one more - and very noticeable - more.
Photo:Palace, Fronts Ethical Jewelery, Marc Jacobs, Burberry
