Yasmin Warsame (1976- ), also known as ياسمين ابشير ارسام, is one of the most successful Canadian fashion models of all time. She was born in Mogadishu, Somalia, the same place that Iman is from, but later she fled to Canada. She has grace, class and one of those beautiful, perfect faces. She now lives in New York where she works for IMG, modelling for top designers in both New York and Paris.
Michael Kors calls her the new Iman. Fashion magazine in 2004 named her “The Most Alluring Canadian”.
About black beauty she says:
I believe that “Black beauty” is underrated and isn’t appreciated, so that’s what I want to represent in this modelling industry. I want to inspire young girls and women all around the world to follow their dreams, especially women of colour.
I just love her.
She is tall and thin: she stands 1.78 metres tall (5 foot 10) and her measurements are 81-61-89 cm (32-24-35 inches). She has a waist-to-hip ratio of 0.69, giving her more of an hourglass figure than most fashion models.
She has one of those faces that can look either unmistakably African or like a brown-coloured white woman, depending on how she is made up – which probably matters in something as white as the fashion industry. She is known for her high cheekbones.
Her family left Somalia for Toronto, Canada. There she studied psychology at university and got into modelling. Unlike most models she did not start modelling till her 20s and did not become well-known till after she had already had a child.
When she was four months away from giving birth to her son, she was booked to model for the Sears catalogue. Sears said she was too “couture”. So in the summer of 2002 she moved to Paris, the centre of all things couture. There she had only one thing on her mind: “Walking down the runway… and not falling.”
Paris proved to be her big break: there Steven Meisel took pictures of her for a feature in Italian Vogue. From that she went on to model for top designers.
She has also appeared in ads for Revlon, Chanel, Banana Republic (as a token), Neiman Marcus and others.
She has appeared on the magazine covers of Surface, Trace, Canadian Flare, French Revue de Modes, Italian Amica, British, American and Spanish Elle and Italian and American Vogue. Among others. She was in the all-black issue of Italian Vogue in July 2008.
In 2007 she was a judge on “Canada’s Next Top Model”.
One her best moments modelling:
It was when I sent my mum (in Somalia) a large amount of money. I spoke to her and she was almost in tears. That was the moment that made modelling so worth it.
Among her friends are the models Iman, Belinda Baidoo, Oluchi Onweagba and Ubah Hassan.
She says:
I hope my face is not my only fortune…I believe I had a life before modelling and will always have a life after modelling.
See also:
thank you so much for this post on Yasmin. i’ve been following her career for some time, her facial symmetry is mesmerizing. there are few models who can hold my gaze like her. here is a link to her Fashionspot page, http://www.thefashionspot.com/forums/f52/yasmin-warsame-527.html
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Yasmin deserves her props in the modeling world. Thank you for highlighting her.
La Reyna
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She is beautiful. It is good to see that you also recognize her beauty regardless of her size.
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She is gorgeous. Great post
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“She has one of those faces that can look either unmistakably African or like a brown-coloured white woman…”
I took issue with the preceding words. What exactly IS a “brown-colured” white woman? Anyone with eyes can understand why you love Yasmin, she is truly beautiful. But I wish you could acknowledge that beauty without making a comparison to white women. It diminishes not only Yasmin’s beauty, but that of women of African descent the world over. Black women have always had to live in the shadows of the white female standard of beauty and such ignorance has no place on a post decicated to a SOMALIAN model!
Iman, another Somalian beauty, has also endured such insensitive comparisons, and has publicly denounced the modeling industry’s tendency to slight black models in this way.
Yasmin is beautiful, because YASMIN is beautiful! Because east African women are simply born that way, and need never be validated by comparisons to any one else!
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Sometimes I do not say things in the best way, but I meant no slight to Miss Warsame nor to any other black woman. My wording was unfortunate and I thank you for pointing it out.
What I meant by it was not that it made her more beautiful but that it made her more acceptable to the fashion industry, which is mostly run by white people. I am struck by how often they make her look whiter in fashion pictures than she is in candid snaps.
If you read more of my blog I think you will find that I love how black women look in and of themselves and not as Caucasian knock-offs. You will also find me comparing the beauty of Sophia Loren to that of black women:
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Aba’s not the only person to say that a black woman from the Horn of Africa looks like a “colored white women”. People used to say the thing about Iman. Neither Iman or Yasmin have a lick of European blood in them. They both look stereotypically Somali.
Many Western people have a monotholic idea of what “African features” are. The problem is this, as I’ve stated several times on here Africans display the widest range of phenotypes. There is no one actual “Afrocentric” look. Too bad that too many Westerners have trouble grasping that reality. It may be easier to stuff people in neat boxes but realistically, it distorts the truth.
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this is Dr Mohamed Ibrahim, iam in Portland Maine. my phone number is 207-615-6648
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you remembar me i mate you in los angeles and i lost your business card that is why i left you my phone becouse you don,t have mine i have yours and you said remembar dont miss my card and i did sorry and the information about the business we tolking about is done so please give call.
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I just found her through your post on Somalia. None of it mattered when I saw her face. OH MY GAWD, she is a freak. I’ll marry her today.
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LOL.
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Yes, my name is really Yasmin Warsame,
im not really a fan of you but i think my mum is otherwise she wouldnt have called me Yasmin.
Yes, im somalia i live in London, England i have 3 siss and 1 bro, 5 kids and im 14 years old.
Anyways Bye 🙂
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that funny my name is yasmin warsame too and i have 3 sister 1 bro, i am somalian ,14 years old born 1995 and live in london weird but funny it nice to see someone ho has my name and age nationality plus same number of brothers and sisters bye
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“Many Western people have a monotholic idea of what “African features” are. The problem is this, as I’ve stated several times on here Africans display the widest range of phenotypes. There is no one actual “Afrocentric” look. Too bad that too many Westerners have trouble grasping that reality. It may be easier to stuff people in neat boxes but realistically, it distorts the truth.”
Agreed! I’m African, specifically Somali, and I’m told too much that I look like a white girl with brown skin. But they know nothing about Africans. Iman, Yasmin Warsame and Liya Kebede look like typical Somalis, Ethiopians, Djiboutis, and Eritreans. But that’s not to say that other Africans can’t have those same features, they can. Africa is the most genetically diverse continent on earth, according to scientists. Also, according to the Out Of Africa theory which is well received by the majority of scientists – Ethiopia is the cradle of humanity. Human life because in the Horn Of Africa. White skin is believed to have been the result of a mutation in skin colour after a group of humans migrated out of Africa. So the original humans were dark skinned, and there is no evidence of racial admixture. The genotypes that whites have today are the ones they inherited from our common ancestors that were born in the Horn of Africa. So if anything, they look like us.
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Oh, I meant to say “Human life began in the Horn of Africa”.
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@Anab
I agree with you so much there is youtuber called Cerebralmadness who says that all the time
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White skin is not so much a mutation of skin color as an expression of a gene commonly found in many African mammals – humans included.
Said gene didn’t help survival much in the tropics, but it did near the north pole, so it became predominant in humans who lived up there.
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I’m of East and Northern African desent and I glad to see more black women like her showing people that blacks come in many different shapes and forms. I had to agrue with people about me being black because I don’t have a broad nose,my hair is shoulder-length,thick and a dark red chesunut brown,my skin is a meduim brown reddish tone,have flat, small cheekbones, and don’t have a huge butt.I get so sick and tired of people telling how I’m suppose to look. Isn’t like that saying that all White should blond hair and blue eyes,
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If you live in North America that is because 75% of the blacks who were brought over came from West Africa. Also because whites notice how blacks are DIFFERENT than themselves, not how they are the same. They assume that if a black person looks somewhat white it is because that person is part white. They forget where all their “white” genes came from – as if God created a separate human race for Europe or something.
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yasmin ina adeerteey i love u so much muah.i m a skin model ,,zamzam from holland
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Reblogged this on Blah-Blah-Blah-Blah Blog.
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I M ahmed warsomes ..I like you as person!
Plse cal me back walaa
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