Jourdan Dunn

The new darling of the catwalks, leggy 18-year-old Jourdan Dunn, could redefine the standards of beauty. She is the first black model, since Naomi Campbell in 1997, to walk for Prada.

When Dunn (then 16) was scouted in a shopping center by Storm (Kate Moss' agency), she was laughing with her friends in front of a sunglasses booth, and not in the process of shopping as many journalists have written, a correction that she, with her youthful candor, does not hesitate to make.

In the same manner, she has also observed that despite the numerous girls of color at the castings, they are rarely seen on the London catwalks. Given the cosmopolitan face of today's society, she finds it incomprehensible that all the models be uniformly white, a fact she stated without wanting to defend a particular cause. She simply wanted to point out a flagrant lack of diversity in the fashion world, something that she would not be able to ignore for long.

The black models that Dunn dreamt about as a child were the same that others dream about today, because no one has taken the place of Naomi Campbell or Tyra Banks over the last 10 years. Since the end of the 1990s, skin color seems to count as much as body weight when choosing which girls the fashion industry will decide to turn into top models.

Some analysts interested in this subject have also observed that very few magazines give their covers to "African" models. Noémie Lenoir may have appeared on the cover of June's Vogue, but appears only once inside. Everyone recognizes the fact that recently, the fashion industry has become almost sectarian, if not outright racist, as if to say only thin, blond, white girls sell.

Fortunately, Dunn's welcome into the fashion world seems to announce the beginning of a change in trends. When she arrived at Storm, Sarah Doukas (the agency's director) was genuinely enthusiastic by her profile. She knew that if Dunn succeeded in making it as a model, it would change the life of more than one teenager. It would sensitize the general public to different types of beauty and open new possibilities in the world of modeling.

In 2007, only months after signing with her agency, Dunn discovered the euphoria of the fashion weeks by walking for Marc Jacobs, Ralph Lauren and Salvatore Ferragamo. Having never left England before, she found herself at first disoriented but succeeded in adapting very quickly. Her face, freshness and flawless figure drew a lot of surprised attention from Benetton who invited her to appear in their fall-winter 2007/08 campaign.

Little by little, Dunn gained self-confidence and realized that fashion, in order to be experienced well, should be taken like a game. At first she felt worn down by the castings and the other girls, equipped with "it" bags and dressed according to the latest trends, but she distanced herself quickly from that kind of competition, deciding that winning a contract was hardly a question of life and death.

That being the case, she was still passionate about her new career. During the photo shoots, many models paid no attention to the clothes, yet Dunn took the time to examine them closely; she also watched the hairdressers attentively, asked many questions and learned incredibly quickly.

At the beginning of 2007, she took an important step by being recognized as the rising star of modeling by Vogue U.K. In October 2007, she walked for Diane Von Furstenberg, Gwen Stefani's L.A.M.B. label, Tommy Hilfiger, Alexander McQueen and Hermès. In February 2008, she went onstage for Prada, and more recently walked for Chanel in Los Angeles.

Barely two years into the business, Dunn has already become a potential top model by succeeding in taming the previously white-only catwalks. Hopefully, this is only the beginning and soon a label, as was the case with YSL and Naomi Campbell, will take the risk of choosing a black model as their icon.