Model Anok Yai Gets Candid About Experiencing Racism, Social Anxiety and Career Superstardom in New Interview

Anok Yai is pulling back the curtain on her journey from outsider to supermodel.

The 26-year-old is the cover star of ELLE’s August 2024 Future of Fashion issue and in its pages, she revealed that fashion has always been on her radar — even when it set her apart from the crowd.

Growing up in Manchester, New Hampshire, Yai — whose family immigrated to the U.S. from Cairo, Egypt when she was 4 — said she “struggled a lot" with social anxiety. “I was the kid in the corner who didn’t talk to anybody,” she said in her candid, wide-ranging interview with ELLE. “I never really had a set friend group. I was more of a floater. I was always on the outside looking in.”

Plus, she explained, “growing up dark-skinned in New Hampshire, there was a lot of racism. A lot of kids made fun of me for my skin color.”

Her ambition allowed her “to feel comfortable with my separation from my peers,” she explained. “I always knew I was meant for bigger things than the small town that I came from.”

So, Yai embraced the “separation” and stopped caring what others thought. “There are aspects of myself as a child that I keep, but that fear I always had of being judged and not accepted? I let that s--- go a long time ago,” she told ELLE.

Not that she cared much in middle school, when her style was, in her own words, “nonsense.”

“I would have themes on certain days. One day, I’d wear all fur—fur boots, a fur jacket, a fur hat, even a fur wallet that had my flip phone in it,” she recalled. “I’ve always been the person who never cared to try to fit in. Kids always saw that as weird, but now as I grow into myself, I think it’s a special quality that I have.”

It’s also a quality she has used to thwart a profession that has attempted to box her in at every turn. “When I started modeling, the industry wanted me to be the cute, bubbly, happy girl who’s just a ball of joy—that’s really not me,” she told ELLE.

Yai is “not your average person,” she explained. “I’m very dark. I’m obsessed with knife-fighting. I love edgy movies—I’m obsessed with the Joker."

That darkness often manifests in her work, including the Future of Fashion cover shoot, which was lensed by Mario Sorrenti. “Mario and I like super edgy and gritty photos. But we didn’t want it to be so dark that it wasn’t ELLE,” Yai told the magazine. “We still wanted it to be cool.” 

Her approach to the photo shoot, like most others, was to create a character, she revealed. “She’s this woman who’s just effortless,” Yai explained. “You can’t take your eyes off her, and you can tell she’s not trying that hard.”

And Yai has had to come up with a lot of these characters. In other words, she is booked and busy. “My friends always drag me because I’m really bad at texting back and answering calls,” she told ELLE. “I’m just always on a set or working on something.”

Last year, Yai said, “I killed myself with all the work that I was doing. For three months straight, I was either on a set or in a hotel, and I only came home to repack a new suitcase.”

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And her life almost looked entirely different. When Yai became a professional, full-time model in 2017, she had to stop pursuing a biochemistry degree — and her parents were less than thrilled.

“They were really scared. My parents were more academic and didn’t know anything about the fashion world,” she told ELLE. “I remember I gave my mom this Fendi bag that Karl Lagerfeld had given me, and she didn’t even know what Fendi was. She was like, ‘Oh, cute.’ And then put it in her room. I don’t know if she’s ever worn it.”

But, remembering her lifelong love of fashion, “they didn’t fight me that hard” in the end.

Her efforts — clearly — were not in vain, but Yai does not like to dwell on her accomplishments. Rather, she looks forward.

"Recognition doesn’t really drive me—it’s about creating the art,” she said. “But it does put a fire under my a-- when I get acknowledgement for the work that I do.”

ELLE’s August 2024 Future of Fashion issue is on newsstands now.