Alek Wek

Alek Wek is, in my eyes, far more than a model; she is someone who rewrote what the industry was willing to call beautiful. Having fled the civil war in Sudan for Britain in 1991 and broken into fashion at eighteen, she brought her deep skin tone and striking Dinka features to a runway culture that had long ignored them, and she changed the standard rather than conforming to it. Her 2015 inclusion in the BBC 100 Women feels almost overdue. What moves me is that her impact is not decorative but structural: she widened the very idea of beauty for everyone who came after.

Name (English)

Alek Wek

Name (Japanese)

アレック・ウェック

Reading

あれっく・うぇっく

Born

April 16, 1977 (age 49)

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Aries / Snake

Origin

Wau, Western Bahr el Ghazal, South Sudan

Occupation

actor / model / fashion model

University

London College of Fashion

Awards & achievements

• 2015 BBC 100 Women

• Instagramhttps://www.instagram.com/msalekwek/
• Wikipedia (English)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alek%20Wek
• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82%A2%E3%83%AC%E3%83%83%E3%82%AF%E3%83%BB%E3%82%A6%E3%82%A7%E3%83%83%E3%82%AF
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q239508

Tags

• Western Bahr el Ghazal
• actor
• model
• fashion model

Last updated

2026-06-21

Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.