Video: How the Imam's daughter became the first Arab supermodel and comic book heroine: Yasmin Gauri
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
Long before Paris and Milan conquered the Hadid sisters, another star of the East was burning in the fashion horizon - brightly and by model standards for quite a long time. Yasmine Gauri is rarely remembered when listing the names of supermodels of the 90s, but her face appeared on the covers of many glossy magazines, and she herself defiled at Chanel and Dior shows. She became one of the first women of Arab descent in the American fashion industry, the first swallow of the coming ethnic diversity on the catwalks.
Yasmine Gauri was born in Montreal to Pakistani and German parents. Her father was an imam and raised his daughter in a strict Islamic tradition. When she was twelve, the family made a pilgrimage to Mecca. In Canada in those years, Muslims were rare, and Yasmin was bullied by classmates - both because of her appearance, which sharply distinguished her from others, and because of her religious beliefs. This unusual appearance will glorify her all over the world after just a few years, and religion … at least, will not hurt to become a model of the Victoria's Secret lingerie brand.
At the age of seventeen, Yasmine Gauri took a job at a local McDonald's, where she was spotted by Edward Zakkaria, the stylist and art director of the Platine Coiffure modeling agency. He invited Yasmin to try himself in the modeling business. Of course, her family was totally against it. How can a decent Muslim girl do such things, walk the catwalk half-dressed, and so on? However, Yasmin was not easy to convince. And now an ambitious girl is storming Paris and Milan …
The appearance of the Canadian Pakistani Yasmine Gauri on the catwalk was a real revolution. Before her, clothes were shown mainly by girls with a Nordic appearance - fair-haired, white-skinned, with classic facial features. Gauri again stood out against the general background - only now they did not laugh at her, but extol her. She was beautiful - and she was different, unlike anyone else in the world.
In 1990, Yasmin moved (rumored to have fled away from her strict family) to New York. Local publications called her skin "coffee", her gait "articulated", her look "dramatic" … and all of this has now become her advantages.
With breakneck speed, the Pakistani diner girl has become a real fashion icon. Leading fashion houses vied with each other to invite her to appear in their advertising campaigns and participate in shows - Givenchy, Hermès, Chanel, Versace … Apparently, over the years of her modeling career, Yasmine Gauri has participated in shows of all significant fashion brands. Her velvet eyes looked sternly at the viewer from the pages of Vogue and Elle on both sides of the Atlantic, she was photographed by the famous Steven Mesial for Italian Vogue. The cult figure of glossy photography, Patrick Demarchelier was ecstatic and insisted that he no longer wanted to work with anyone other than Yasmine Gauri: “The best subject for my photographs!” However, it was difficult to call Yasmin an “object” seriously - everyone who saw her, felt this inner strength and firmness of spirit.
Already in the early years of her modeling career, Yasmin appeared in the catalogs of the legendary Victoria's Secret brand, dressed in minimalistic swimwear, and this brought her even greater success. It is not known what feelings Gauri experienced, doing what both her faith and her family forbade her for many years - she never spoke about her views or her feelings, not a single scandal was associated with her name. And the moment of real glory was still ahead.
Yasmine Gauri, with her tall stature, stern features and imperious gaze, embodied a woman of the 90s, a woman of a new type - strong, courageous, who knows what she wants. Designers and photographers actively exploited her image of a “femme fatale”, dressing her in black leather, aggressive corsets and revealing scarlet dresses. That is why Gianni Versace chose her to participate in the infamous show "Bondage", which caused a flurry of criticism for overt, aggressive sensuality. On the catwalk, one after another came out girls in fetishist (more precisely, sadomasochistic) paraphernalia - harnesses, collars, corsets, high boots … to another to look at female sensuality - here the models looked not as resigned objects of male attraction, but as personalities, strong-willed, passionate, active. This show could have ruined Versace and cast a shadow over the participants in his show, but in fact it marked a turn towards female subjectivity in haute couture.
Yasmine Gauri ended her fashion career at the age of thirty-six, having professionally “outlived” many of her colleagues. It seemed that the model decided to leave the catwalk before it ceased to be in demand, to remain in history a beautiful oriental warrior with a predatory gaze and slightly contemptuously curved lips, but, in fact, for Yasmin herself, her profession was no longer so interesting.
Little is known about her further fate. In those years when the supermodels of the past once again return to the catwalks - already as "age" models - Yasmin remains silent. Immediately after her “retirement,” she harshly cut off any communication with the press, and in general her way of life can be called reclusive. It is known, however, that she married lawyer Ralph Bernstein and became the mother of two beautiful daughters. In addition, Yasmin took up her education - having got on the podium almost from school, she was able to devote time to her studies only now. Journalists were able to find out that the former "articulated gait coffee queen" is interested in economics and jurisprudence. And most importantly, she is happy to live that quiet life that she has created for herself. But Yasmin's story doesn't end there. In the Italian superhero comic series about Jonathan Style, there is a character named Jasmine, a powerful witch and former model who was born in Montreal to a Pakistani and German family. And this is not a coincidence at all - the creators were inspired by the image of Yasmin, and even the name for their heroine was chosen almost identical.
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