Just a year ago, residents of the Ciudadela neighborhood in the coastal village of Tumaco, Colombia, knew Valentina Castro Rojas because she was a girl with a talent for braiding afro hair.
Other than that, her 1.75 m height also drew attention in parades and beauty contests at her school and in the neighborhood.
But no one imagined that, at just 18 years old, Valentina would be walking the runway for the best-selling luxury brand in the world.
Louis Vuitton is well known, but distant for the vast majority of tumaqueños. The brand’s only store in Colombia is in Bogotá, more than 1,000 km from Valentina’s home. Its products are accessible to a small minority.
Before her life was changed by an Instagram message sent by a talent scout, Valentina earned between US$4 and US$12 (approximately R$20 to R$60) to do the hair of every client in her neighborhood .
Now, she walks the runway in multi-million dollar outfits at iconic venues like the Musée d’Orsay in Paris or the Italian island of Isola Bella in Lake Maggiore.
“One of the things I admire most about other models and also about myself is making it look easy, because it’s not. It can be very cold, it can be very hot, your feet can hurt, but you go as if nothing is happening”, says Valentina to BBC News Mundo, the BBC’s Spanish-language service.
After several months traveling around Europe, he has returned to Tumaco and is in his final year of high school at a school near his home, while studying English virtually.
The model lives with her mother, who sells products by catalogue, and her sisters. Her father is a fisherman.
Model is completing high school at school close to home in Tumaco –
LIFE BEFORE BEING A MODEL
Tumaco, where Valentina was born and raised, is a small town on the Pacific coast of Colombia, close to the border with Ecuador. It has just over 250,000 inhabitants – 4 out of 5 people are Afro-Colombian.
It is a place where the hardest facets of Colombian reality crystallize: poverty and violence.
According to the last demographic census, more than half of the inhabitants of Tumaco live below the multidimensional poverty line; 3 out of 10 have their basic needs unmet.
Valentina, however, describes Tumaco as “peaceful”.
“Although we don’t have all the resources and the streets are not paved, we are all very united”, he explains.
“From Tumaco, I really like the beach and the sunset, the food, I like many things.”
Getting her hair done with her sister is one of her favorite childhood memories.
“I’m simple in the way I dress, but not in my hair. I really like my hair, I like to change my look, I don’t like to keep my hair still”, says Valentina.
It was precisely through an Instagram account where he published images of braids and hairstyles that Sebastián Bedoya, a talent scout for the Dominican agency Nefer Models, made contact.
More than half of Tumaco’s inhabitants live below the poverty line –
UNEXPECTED MESSAGE
Bedoya is dedicated to looking for models in Colombia who have a certain height and a certain face profile – more precisely, similar to that of the Egyptian queen Nefertiti.
In November, he found Valentina on social media and sent her a message asking if she would like to be a model.
“I didn’t have a lot of followers, but they [da agência] They really liked the pictures and poses I posted. In many photos, I mimicked how other models posed. I photographed myself with the front camera”, remembers Valentina.
With great distrust, she replied that she was indeed interested in a modeling career.
But when Valentina told her mother about the messages, she too was immediately suspicious.
“Nobody thought it was true,” recalls the model.
The ghost of women who are promised work abroad and end up being trafficked clouded Valentina’s expectations of pursuing a modeling career.
The distrust continued for several weeks, but Valentina’s insistence was such that her mother agreed to talk to Bedoya and later to Nileny Dippton, a well-known former beauty pageant contestant and Dominican businesswoman who runs Nefer Models.
They booked a trip for Valentina and her mother to Santo Domingo, so that their career could be started – without knowing that the French giant Louis Vuitton would come further ahead.
“It was when we got there that we were a little calmer”, reports Valentina.
180º TURN
Valentina took on the daunting task of learning to be an international model in just a few weeks.
“It was a very drastic change. The food was very different. I had to eat healthy. It was very difficult for me, really. I started exercising, running, training, drinking lots of water. From the first day I arrived, I had no rest.”
Before this trip – the first time she left Colombia – Valentina had never worn heels.
The change in habits was so sudden that it ended up taking a toll.
A few months later, on a flight from Italy to England, Valentina began to feel like she couldn’t breathe.
“I had a very strict diet that affected me a lot. I fainted on the plane and had to go to the hospital”, he says. “I’ve never been this sick. I was getting malnourished.”
According to her words, the doctor recommended that she “eat better”.
“I’m used to eating a lot. Since then, I’ve been eating my normal food.”
LANDING ON THE CATWALKS
Not even four months have passed since the first exchange of messages with the talent scout, when Valentina received the news that her debut would be at the Louis Vuitton autumn-winter show at Paris fashion week, last March.
“I was very sure of myself, I felt very happy, very content,” she says.
Now that she knows the world of fashion better, Valentina says that she has heard many stories of models who are excited to walk for big brands, but at the last minute, that doesn’t happen.
It was not her case.
It was time for the show at the renowned Musée d’Orsay and Valentina was the second to appear – with her hair braided and a structured black jacket, a piece that was one of the highlights of the collection.
Valentina describes the runway as a battle ring against her own mind.
“There came a time when I was climbing a ladder, I stepped on the edge of a step and almost fell. I started to get uncomfortable and my mind said I was going to fall, but I continued”.
Vogue magazine called the collection designed by Nicolas Ghesquière “the epitome of French elegance”.
The guest list included superstars like Zendaya and Jaden Smith.
“Yes, I met celebrities, but the problem is that I don’t memorize the names. They have some strange names. I’m not a person who is a fan of someone. They ask me for a photo”, he jokes.
About her relationship with the other models, she says: “I smiled a lot and tried to include myself even though I didn’t understand. If they laughed, I laughed, even though I didn’t understand what they were talking about.”
“I also met other Latina models, but I felt left out. That hurt a little.”
After the show, Valentina was chosen to shoot promotional photos and videos for the collection.
She has continued to work exclusively for Louis Vuitton ever since. In April, she walked in South Korea, and in May, in Italy.
Of her show in Seoul, she recalls, “My outfit was flowing and I looked super cute. I felt like a superhero.”
BACK TO TUMACO
Valentina spent almost all of 2023 outside Colombia. He came back less than a month ago to finish school.
Coming back was an almost impossible mission, as each time the date of her flight approached, new photo shoots and campaigns abroad appeared.
“Now I feel good because I’m at home resting, I feel happy.”
Since she returned, dozens of young people have sought her out because they dream of following in her footsteps.
“There are a lot of girls who want to be models, but I don’t like to sell them that dream.”
Despite that, Valentina has already agreed with the agency Nefer Models that will make a casting (something like a recruitment) of new models in Tumaco. She is helping some young women who she sees potential to prepare for this opportunity.
In addition, Valentina will travel again in September to her agency’s headquarters in the Dominican Republic and hopes to remain an exclusive model for Louis Vuitton, although for the time being she does not have a long-term contract with the brand.
Furthermore, she dreams of being a hairdresser and having her own beauty salon.
And she doesn’t miss an opportunity to talk about her hair.
Valentina says that after years of chemical straightening, she and the women in her family are getting back to using their natural hair.
“I think it looks really nice and you can do a lot more with afro than straight hair. I think it’s really beautiful. And it also represents us.”
-Text originally published here
Source: Folha
I am Frederick Tuttle, who works in 247 News Agency as an author and mostly cover entertainment news. I have worked in this industry for 10 years and have gained a lot of experience. I am a very hard worker and always strive to get the best out of my work. I am also very passionate about my work and always try to keep up with the latest news and trends.
