Lau­ra Dowrich-Phillips

It's hard to be­lieve Alyssah Ali once thought of her­self as an ug­ly duck­ling. How­ev­er, she says at 13, that's ex­act­ly the view she had of her­self. So when, at that age she en­ter­tained thoughts about mod­el­ling, she dared not re­veal it to any­one, lest she be laughed at. To­day, Ali's mod­el­ling ca­reer is no laugh­ing mat­ter. Now 20, she has blos­somed in­to a strik­ing­ly beau­ti­ful woman whose bronzed skin and pierc­ing eyes have land­ed her spreads in Marie Claire (France and US), Elle, Flare and Vogue In­dia and the cov­ers of Anokhi, Lush and Verve mag­a­zines. More re­cent­ly, she land­ed a cam­paign with Ralph Lau­ren. The 5 ft 10 inch beau­ty, who has been nick­named Poc­a­hon­tas, was born in Mis­sis­sauga, On­tario, Cana­da, to Trinida­di­an par­ents. She has tons of fam­i­ly here, she said, and last vis­it­ed three years ago. Ali is very proud of her Caribbean her­itage even though many think she is from In­dia.

"It was be­cause some­one wrote an ar­ti­cle about me be­ing In­di­an. Ever since, I have been try­ing to prove to peo­ple that my back­ground is Trinidad. Even then, some do not know where it is and as­sume it is some­where in Asia. I am very proud of where my fam­i­ly is from. I would love to cel­e­brate my Trin­bag­on­ian her­itage if giv­en the chance," she said. Mod­el­ling at Fash­ion Week Trinidad and To­ba­go (FWTT) would give her that chance. "Even though I am Cana­di­an and proud, it would feel like an ho­n­our to walk on the cat­walk in Trinidad. I would fi­nal­ly be able to rep­re­sent my­self as a Tri­ni and not as an In­di­an. Don't get me wrong, I have noth­ing against any­thing. It would just be nice for once to do some­thing I am fa­mil­iar with and to rep­re­sent my back­ground coun­try," she said via email, ad­mit­ting that she was ex­cit­ed to be high­light­ed in a lo­cal news­pa­per. Ali grew up in a very con­ser­v­a­tive home where she and her sis­ter weren't even al­lowed to wear biki­nis or short shorts. There­fore, when a mod­el called Ka­reema spot­ted her in the mall and told her she should be a mod­el, her moth­er was against it.

"My moth­er would nev­er have let me be­cause she was so strict. A cou­ple years lat­er when I turned 18, I went any­way with­out her know­ing be­cause I could legal­ly do what I want­ed," said Ali, who just last week­end mod­elled in Ja­maica at Dulce de Leche, a swimwear and lin­gerie fash­ion show. Now I can wear what­ev­er I want and half the world has seen me in lin­gerie. My mom is very proud of me now." The mod­el that spot­ted Ali was rep­re­sent­ed by the Nor­wayne An­der­son Mod­els (NAM) Agency in Cana­da. Founder, An­der­son re­port­ed­ly said that from the mo­ment he saw Ali it was yes with­out a ques­tion. "She has a face to launch a thou­sand ships. There are beau­ties, but then there is Alyssah Ali." In 2008, a few months af­ter she signed with NAM, in­ter­na­tion­al pow­er­house agency IMG signed her up too. Her job has since tak­en her to ex­ot­ic lo­cales all over the world. She has lived in Mu­nich, New York, Paris and Lon­don. "Some of the most amaz­ing places I have been were Mex­i­co, In­done­sia, In­dia, Switzer­land, South Africa to name a few," she says, list­ing her favourite coun­tries. "There are so many great ex­pe­ri­ences. The trav­el­ling is al­ways amaz­ing.

Alyssah AliThe most ex­cit­ing thing for me when I trav­elled did not have any­thing to do with mod­el­ling ex­cept for that I was com­ing home from a job. I was on the plane home from Spain and I sat be­side some­one from NASA. I got to ask him so many ques­tions I had about space and he an­swered them. Some, he said, he was not al­lowed to talk about, so I felt spe­cial. The on­ly bad ex­pe­ri­ence I have is when I am su­per late for my flights; I get ner­vous and freak out. Every­thing else has been a learn­ing ex­pe­ri­ence and I would not call them bad." Ali start­ed mod­el­ling at a time when she was try­ing to fig­ure out what she want­ed to study at uni­ver­si­ty. She hasn't aban­doned hopes of fur­ther­ing her ed­u­ca­tion but says mod­el­ling gives her time to fig­ure out what she wants to do with her life while mak­ing mon­ey. "I ap­plied to uni­ver­si­ties for many dif­fer­ent sub­jects not know­ing what I want­ed to do in life. I knew go­ing to uni­ver­si­ty is al­ways an op­tion but with mod­el­ling, you have a lifes­pan. So I fig­ured I would give mod­el­ling a try and save up the mon­ey for uni­ver­si­ty," she ex­plained, stat­ing that as­tron­o­my, teach­ing and ge­ol­o­gy are among her ca­reer op­tions.

Told there are many peo­ple in Trinidad who as­pire to a suc­cess­ful mod­el­ling ca­reer as hers, Ali, who dreams of one day work­ing with Valenti­no, ad­vised those peo­ple to al­ways keep a pos­i­tive at­ti­tude. "Even though you may have the worst shoot, it has al­ways worked in my favour to not let the lit­tle things bug you. An­oth­er thing some mod­els do for­get is to be them­selves. "I see some mod­els get­ting lost in this world be­cause they take things too per­son­al­ly. The most im­por­tant ad­vice some­one gave me was when you were not picked for the job, it was not be­cause they did not like you or you did not have what it takes. You just were not what they were look­ing for and you keep do­ing you."