How a refugee went from Target cashier to famed supermodel — without sacrificing her hijab

Ugbad Abdi is next. Finally.

Her nerves are swollen like shaken carbonation behind a jammed cork. For 20 minutes, she’s watched from the back of this long line as the women at the front disappear through the ceiling-high doorway.

More than 60 of them now, one by one by one.

On the other side of the corridor, global fashion’s most important tastemakers wait with anticipation. Right there. Inches away. She inhales. One last deep breath, an attempt to center the anxiety pulsing through her veins like Vegas neon. 

Her dark chocolate gown, complete with a tulle headdress that envelops her shoulders like petals surrounding a bud, feels like a museum piece — a work of art she shouldn’t be touching, let alone wearing.

Snaking through the salons of an old Paris mansion, the circuitous catwalk is marked with bundles of spindly wood branches and vibrant floral blooms, adornments that add an ethereal air to the silk-stocking grandeur. Abdi’s been walking the route in her mind like a quarterback cramming play calls in the tunnel since they all queued up.

Abdi is the penultimate model, the last impression before superstar Naomi Campbell closes the show.

She exhales, and turns the corner. She glides into the low-lit room, posing under a smattering of golden-hued lamps that soften the room’s edges — as though in a dream.

For Abdi, this show — her first professional runway gig — is indeed a fantasy made real.

Just a few months earlier, she was working a checkout lane at Target after graduating high school in Des Moines, Iowa, thousands of miles away from the heart of haute couture — not just in distance, but in spirit, too.

And less than a decade ago, all her possessions — every single scrap she could call hers — fit into one backpack.

So, walking in Paris Fashion Week? For Valentino, no less? With Naomi Campbell? The Naomi Campbell. Pinch her. Hard.

“Whether I knew how it was going to change, it didn't matter. I just felt something shifted in my life,” Abdi says. “It feels like the stars aligned.”

Abdi’s preternatural debut would be far from the last “pinch me” moment on her assent from shopgirl to one of the most in-demand models in the world, labeled a breakout star by none other than fashion queenmaker Anna Wintour herself. 

As a devout Muslim, Abdi, 24, dresses modestly and wears a hijab, or, when shooting or walking shows, a hat or head covering. Hardly the norm for an industry built on baring skin.

But since immigrating to America at 9 years old, a refugee from the Somali Civil War, and being discovered by a talent spotter who took interest in her Instagram makeup looks — another "pinch me" moment — Abdi has held her faith as non-negotiable.

Fashion may be her passion, but her religion is as foundational as her bones — and does as much to keep her upright, both mentally and physically.

“Coming into this fashion world, it feels like a family,” she says, “a family that I was accepted into, and one where I'm heard and seen for who I am.”

This story, these circumstances, “It’s Cinderella,” says Lacey Hevern, the West Coast scout who discovered Abdi.

It’s the Miracle on Ice. Spartacus. Rudy. Unlikely bordering on ludicrous. It’s that one in a million alchemy that never happens — until it does.

And when it does, it’s the manna of fairy tales.

Bright bursts of color: Born into war, Abdi finds peace in a refugee camp

Abdi came to a Kenyan refugee camp in the arms of her mother, a baby born to a country at war. Somalian and yet Stateless.

For the first decade of Abdi’s life, housing, school, food were all temporary by their very nature. Not the relationships or the emotions, but the spaces, the objects, they were fleeting.

So, home became metaphysical, not a place, but a state of being. If Abdi was with her family — which would grow to include four siblings — she was home.  

Whether a testament to her powerful parents or the merciful elasticity of childhood, Abdi says she never felt like she was missing anything from life. Her parents shielded them, she knows now, but they were far from alone in their story of life upended.

“Everyone in that refugee camp had a similar story of something horrible that they've been displaced from, their homes and their lives and everything that their parents knew. So it wasn't something that we talked about openly,” Abdi says.

“It was just what was normal to us.”

In the evenings, parents gathered to watch kids play in the makeshift roads before dinner and bedtime. And on Islamic holidays, families pooled what little they had to throw celebrations.

Together, they reveled in traditions, like how on the last night of Ramadan adults would give kids pocket change, just enough for Abdi and her siblings to get a piece of candy. 

Abdi recently started writing about this time in her life, journaling the stories behind the images that pop into her mind like photo slides on a Kodak carousel. Particularly vivid in those memories are the hijabs — their bright bursts of color, different fabrics, different patterns — worn by her mother and the other aunties of the camp.

Bold. So glamorous, Abdi thought. “I just admired them,” she says.

For as long as she can remember, she wanted to look like those women. So she’d wear her own hijab on and off growing up, for special occasions or going to the mosque. As a middle-schooler, she decided to start wearing a head covering full-time.

After nearly a decade in expatriate limbo, word finally came that the Abdis’ refugee application had been accepted.

Within the space of a sentence delivered hurriedly by her parents, any other day became the day the Abdis left everything behind — again — for a shot at survival, at betterment. Toys. School books. The things that populated their world were gifted to others.

Abdi had one backpack to fill with the tools she’d need to build a new life.

Pinch her.

A quiet, 6-foot-tall eighth grader reaches out to the fashion world — one post at a time  

Abdi was out of the “silent phase” — but only just — when she made it to Elizabeth Brekke’s eighth grade English Language Learners class.

Beginning speakers, as most refugees are, can spend as much as a year completely silent — scared and uncomfortable with the one-two punch of English language and American customs. So Brekke, a veteran teacher, uses facial expressions and hand gestures and body language and all manner of visuals to coax kids out of their protective shell.

Silent communication, Brekke finds, can often resonate the loudest.  

“Ugbad was still very, very quiet,” Brekke says. Reserved. Stuck mostly with the other girl in her class who spoke Somali.

“It was rare that she smiled and laughed, which is kind of sad to say. I think at that point in her life, she was just kind of really overwhelmed."

“I'd always crack jokes or do weird things, just so I could see that smile.”

There are gospels of the immigrant experience so iron-clad they become cliches. And as an oldest child, Abdi took on a lot of responsibility for her younger siblings’ care, while also heeding her parents encouragement to focus on school, school, school.

“If I'm being honest, I was a really serious kid,” she says. “I always just wanted to do everything right. And if I made a mistake, I would feel like it was the end of the world.

“I was a goody two shoes, if you will.”

So modeling? Abdi wasn’t sure that was an actual job. Honestly, she says.

But an interest in fashion crept out in little ways. She’d pick out lip glosses as little prizes in class, Brekke says. And she always matched her hijab with her patterned skirts, favoring bright bursts of color.

The summer before eighth grade, Abdi sprouted three inches, growing to nearly 6-feet tall as a 13-year-old. Taller than most of her teachers. Taller than most people, period.

Walking around Des Moines, Abdi couldn’t escape a repeated refrain: Have you ever thought about modeling?

Brekke even joined the chorus, not asking, but telling Abdi she was going to be a model.

“She looked at me like I was from another planet," she says. "In her mind, the models were the ones wearing no clothes.”

But Abdi got curious, and research about modeling led her to an interest in makeup. She’d wake up before sunrise in high school to do her face, adding little pops of color, of course.

After graduation, Abdi took a gap year and got a job as a checker at Target. She gave herself a few months to clarify what she wanted to do, where she wanted to go.

She’d harbored desires to work at a zoo as a child and liked the empathy involved with nursing. Mostly, she wanted to support her family.   

Yet, she couldn’t shake modeling and, specifically, makeup, a creative outlet she started to share on Instagram. She’d post using fashion-focused hashtags ― #aspiringmodel #scoutme ― a hope cast out into the churning rough of the internet for someone, anyone to respond.

Then, at the height of that sweaty Iowa summer, her phone dinged with a notification. A message. And a refrain she’d heard countless times before: Hey, have you ever thought about modeling?

Pinch her.

'Instant supermodel': In one week, Abdi’s entire life changes

The woman peering up from Lacey Hevern’s computer screen is stunning. Like, stop-you-right-while-you're-scrolling-and-stare stunning.

She’s wearing a lot of makeup, sure, but Hevern’s trained eyes see underneath: The knife-edge cheekbones. Skin like the soft side of velvet. A Pre-Raphaelite leanness in her features. A gap in her two front teeth that is more interesting than marring. Remarkable.

But mostly it’s her gaze. Silent communication that is resonating loudly. Presence. Majesty.

This woman knows, innately, how to connect to the person on the other side of the image.

Hevern was scouted as a model the analog way — walking around a mall — a decade earlier. And she’d done early scouting herself in real life, too, at concerts, games.

But now, the talent is online, and Hevern was spending days macheting her way through the social media thicket, following modeling or “looking to be discovered”-type hashtags deeper and deeper in search of an untouched gem. And she’d found her.

Where is she? Hevern scans the profile. Iowa. Des Moines.

Right. So how quickly can I get there? A red eye from Seattle to Minneapolis. Tonight. 

“It's never been that perfect where it's like: This is an instant supermodel,” Hevern says.

“Knowing how hard it is to find the right face, the right body type, the right personality, the willingness and the desire to actually do it and to get on a plane and go for it — for things like that to align, it's just one in a million.”

On no sleep, Hevern flew to meet Abdi and her family, snapped some photos and called the modeling agency. They have to act fast, Hevern reports, because this girl is the total package. Gorgeous, yes, but with a natural magnetism — a power that didn’t ebb because she wore a hijab.

“It was never a question of: Are you willing to take it off?” Hevern says of Abdi's hijab. “Because why not just keep it on and be who you are and let that be part of you as a model and the reason why somebody would hire you.

“That can be part of your entire brand as a model.”

The next step was to get to New York City, see the agency, meet the players. Abdi’s parents were, understandably, apprehensive. They’d never been to the East Coast, and they hadn’t flown out of Iowa since arriving in America. Is this a scam? Would she be safe?

Take a few days to decide, Hevern tells Abdi as she leaves. She’ll be in touch. But just hours later, Abdi calls. She's ready ― now.

“This was a time where I felt like just doing everything and saying yes to everything and seeing where it leads me,” Abdi says. “I trusted my gut.”

Abdi’s dad made the trip to NYC with her. But he flew back alone.

Resolute, Abdi moved into one of the agency’s apartments and started training: runway coaching, learning her angles, being on a set. She’d practice up and down the hallway of her building for an hour at a time.

Back and forth, back and forth.

Her week started with a direct message and ended with a whole new life. So now what? she’d wonder as she strutted.

Back and forth, back and forth.

A few days after Abdi’s debut in Paris, Hevern was packing to meet her in New York and celebrate her first Fashion Week. She knew Abdi was going to be in the Marc Jacobs show, so she pulled out her laptop and started streaming.  

And Hevern nearly choked on a California roll. Abdi was the first model down the runway, wearing a dramatic leopard-print cape: Bright bursts of color in sharp relief to the hall’s inky shadows.

Adbi was the opener, the first impression, a coveted spot that may as well be a launch pad to the fashion stratosphere. And she’s 19. Naturally, a seasoned pro.

“I've never seen it happen that fast for anybody — ever,” Hevern says.

But Ugbad, “she’s literally one of a kind.”

Pinch her.

Representation revolution: Abdi stitches past and present together for a bright future    

Models — especially runway models — are walking billboards. Not to say there isn’t a great deal of skill or talent or art to the work, but their task is to sell a designer’s artistic vision or, quite literally, the clothes on their back.

Fading, not pulling focus, is intrinsic to the job description. Or was.

Over the last 15 years or so, designers have increasingly sought to celebrate different types of beauty — allowing models to foreground themselves and to break free from a mold of conformity that too often was white and over-thin.

“When I first stepped into the industry, there were no blueprints for what we were trying to do. Every step forward felt like an uphill battle at the start,” says Halima Aden, who in 2017 became the first hijabi runway model. “To now witness Ugbad not just thriving but redefining the standards of beauty and elegance on her own terms is incredibly powerful."

“Ugbad is proof that when given the space, representation can be both revolutionary and timeless.”

Within her first year, Abdi walked for a coterie of fashion’s biggest names: Valentino, of course, and Marc Jacobs, who fashioned a custom feathered beanie to bring his look in line with her religious observances.

Burberry, Max Mara, Chanel, Anna Sui and Victoria Beckham, who crafted a navy scarf headpiece for Abdi’s modesty. And Lanvin and Fendi, for which Abdi was the first hijabi runway model.

And on top of those shows, she three times graced the pages of Vogue, the gospel of American fashion, including in the essential-reading September issue.

Wearing tulle headdresses, beanies, skull caps, scarfs, fedoras, even floppy gardening numbers, Abdi proved that modern style can be inclusive and pioneering and bold and so glamorous all at the same time.

While Abdi says she never felt discriminated against in the fashion world for her hijab or her modesty, both were new to some of her peers. Most were accepting and asked questions with an open mind, but sometimes ignorance showed.

So, she found herself expounding on how she got where she did and what she was doing and what the hijab and her presence meant to Muslim girls looking for role models ― like she was once,

All that explanation sat heavy on the slim shoulders of someone still sorting out what being in the industry even entailed.

“I was trying to represent myself for a whole demographic of women who wear the hijab for many different reasons,” she says. “It’s almost like I took on the weight of representing the hijab for everyone, but over time I realized that’s not my job.”

Professionally, Abdi’s hijab has given her a backbone to speak when compromise or sacrifice would come at the expense of her core values. Simply put: Learning to hold the line on covering her hair has helped her protect boundaries in other areas. 

“I've always felt like I was weak in expressing myself. I felt like, growing up, the new environments that I was in constantly made me crawl into a shell a little bit,” she says. “But as I got older, I realized that my voice has always been there, and it’s not something that I need to hold back.”

The resilience of her parents to start over, and the strength to do so on the hope that tomorrow would be better — and that hope alone — pushes her to continue defying all odds, on her terms.

Abdi still feels the same pulsing and pounding she felt back at Valentino’s Paris show when she queues up today. Among the hive of energy right before the music’s downbeat hits and the first model turns the corner, Abdi feels her most alive.

But where anxiety once lived, excitement now reigns.

"The fashion world is just made of people who come from all backgrounds, and people who just want to create," she says. “It's all a mix of dreams.”

One messy, intertwined, beautiful whole.

Abdi has recently been breaking down some of the compartments that house the chapters of her life, walls built to cope in new surroundings. She’s stitching a whole self together —  joining past to present, tragedy to triumph, America to Africa to home — so the seams show less.

And as she plots out what she wants next, her greatest goal lies not in the sparkle of flash bulbs or bright bursts of color, but in the dusty streets of the refugee camp, where her neighbors pooled together something out of nothing.

She wants to go back there one day, find out a way to help. To give back to the place that forged her.

Now that would be the perfect ending of her fairy tale.

And, if that happens: Pinch her.

Courtney Crowder, the Iowa Columnist at the Des Moines Register, part of the USA TODAY Network, traverses the state's 99 counties telling Iowans' stories. Reach her at ccrowder@dmreg.com.