It goes without saying that each of the winners at the 2025 Fashion Awards is truly deserving, but there was one recipient–announced early on in the run-up to the biggest night in British fashion–who feels especially so: Anok Yai , the South Sudanese-American Model of the Year.

The story of Yai’s discovery is one of the most widely told in recent fashion lore–which is fitting, since it harks back to when a picture of the then-biochemistry student at the Howard University Homecoming in 2017 went viral on Twitter. “I think I must have manifested this for myself since, like, elementary school,” she reminisces over the phone from a suite at The Peninsula, hours before stepping onto the carpet at the Royal Albert Hall. “I always told my mom that something was going to happen to me by the t

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