When I was in high school,we were, like, 4,000 or 5,000 students, and 50 girls - and I didn't have a date for my prom. My father paid my cousin to take me.
The women I gravitate to are the ones who defy convention and reinvent themselves - hence, they reinvent the world around them.
I have no intention of ever writing beauty tips on how to make an African-American nose look slimmer or Asian eyes look bigger. That's degrading. Asian eyes are what's beautiful about you and what makes you different.
We are very private, so we decided from early on that we will keep the press and editors and everybody out of our house.
I am the face of a refugee. I was once a refugee. I was with my family in exile.
After the bones mended, my left eye was smaller than my right, and my eyebrow never grew back. But you know what? Big deal. I think I became beautiful after the accident. I became kinder, more aware. I gained respect for other people.
Mrs. Obama is not a great beauty. But she is so interesting-looking - so bright. That will always take you farther.
I wasn't a major in political science for nothing, so I understood the politics of beauty and the politics of race when it comes to the fashion industry.
That is something that my mother instilled in me at a very young age - to know my self-worth. And I have had times again and again in the fashion industry where all of that was tested and I rose to the occasion because I was told that I am worthy and I should be able to walk away from something that is not worthy of me.
I thought at 46 years old, I've been removed from the fashion industry for 10 years. I couldn't possibly write a model's book. That's for a 20-year-old. But I could say what I want to say without chastising the industry.
There are some people who have helped to advance me and other girls, but the fashion industry is always behind popular culture. They think they understand the zeitgeist. They don't know anything about the zeitgeist.
It's really not a good idea to forecast or double guess the fates; you will always be fooled.
Italian was my first foreign language. I speak it better than English.
There are highlights when you become irreplaceable as a model, like when you become a muse to designers. They look at you differently; you're not a coat hanger for hire.
I was under 18, and to leave Kenya to come to the United States, to get a passport, you had to be 18. So I lied and said I was 19 to get the passport, because otherwise, I had to have permission from my parents, and my parents would never have let me come.
Looking good is a commitment to yourself and to others. Wigs, killer heels, Pilates, even fillers - whatever works for you, honey.
Life is too short not to have pasta, steak, and butter.
We all have friends and loved ones who say 60's the new 30. No. Sixty's the new 60.
I suffer from low self-esteem. I had horrible self-esteem growing up. You really have to save yourself because the critic within you will eat you up. It's not the outside world - it's your interior life, that critic within you, that you have to silence.
I have a 15-year-old daughter who thinks that I always had this self confidence that I have now at the age of 60. And I always tell her that what she is going through - the low self-esteem as a teenager - that is a right of passage.
