Iman_Vogue-Black

I was born in Somalia and my grandfather decided to give me the name inna which means to have faith in God in Somalia Iman is a man's name so I'm the only Somali girl I know who's named Eman in 1969 there was a revolution in Somalia and we went on foot through the border of Kenney and instantly I was you know my life changes from a daughter of a diplomat to all of a sudden a refugee and one day on my way to camp was one afternoon this white man stopped me in the street and then he said have you ever been photographed I've never seen a fashion magazine so I had no idea what he was talking about and he said you know I you know you can make money of this I'll pay you so he took pictures of me this was Peter beard he took pictures of me and I came to New York the things that I rely constantly is accessories the right choose the right bags the jewelry that's what I really like and I travel a lot I'm always collecting things and so I have this sensibility of global stuff I mixed up all the time I'm a huge collector of captains I have like a 350 captains I have never met a kaftan that I did not love [Music] when I arrived in America I had the luxury and so fortunate to have worked straight on my first week I worked without the Elgar Francesco Scavullo and Avedon's the idea of creating a cosmetic line came to me on my first shoot in 1975 with Francesco Scavullo for American Vogue I went to the studio and the makeup artist asked me a very perplexing question he asked that I bring my own foundation I've never heard about maker I've never used the makeup in my life so I had no concept of what he was talking about when he did my makeup it looked very strange because I look kind of great not brown anymore it looks very great so I was very displeased with it and was hoping that maybe the magic of the camera something will happen and I will look like my usual brown skin and thank God the pictures were black and white so the seed of that was planted in my head in 1970 I started him on cosmetics in 1994 so I when I was creating him on cosmetics to me I wanted to have a new language but if I didn't want the old mentality that the whole world is black and white the world is not black and white there's a lot of different shades in between and so I wanted to create a new product new language for people to address the beauty is and in 1994 when I created Iman cosmetics it was the first company there was truly multicultural and you know and truly global in terms of all the skin tones that we were covering we started first in America and Canada where now we are also in Europe in London in front and in England in France in Italy I wrote I am a man which was a book that really addressed my working life as a model in 2004 years and years of course owning a cosmetic company publishers have asked me to write a beauty book so I thought really the one who I want to write this this book is for like the generation of my daughter in the nine years old who is a multi-racial so the book is called the beauty of color when you look at the book there is the pictures of these beautiful girls but on the side is the name their name and their country of origin and I wanted to celebrate that so I wanted really to create a book that really celebrated in a way to show it that we are here and we are very good you

Channel: simplylovelyful

Views: 86,149

Rating: 4.800416 out of 5

Keywords: Iman, Vogue

Id: iVVUSjidFxc

Length: 4min 59sec (299 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 09 2010