Star Struck Style

March 23 is Yasmeen Ghauri’s birthday.

Sheesh, I’ve been blogging for a long time! Just a minute ago, I was looking for a photo of Yasmeen Ghauri. I came across an image that I posted of the model on my old fashion blog. It was from ten years ago!

Anyway, the most interesting thing about the post was that I spent the entire passage complaining about how white the runways were in 2008, comparing that phenomenon with the diversity of the early nineties. Here’s an excerpt from that blog:

“I don’t know what’s happened to diversity in fashion. I used to praise the business for being inclusive, but I can’t bring myself to do the same today. It’s as if the whole industry has taken a giant step backwards. I’d like to write a profile of Yasmeen Ghauri where I call her a ‘trailblazer’ in modeling, but I really don’t know if she had to do much to rise to the top, other than being gorgeous. Nevertheless, I wonder if someone who looked like her could be supermodel today. I doubt it.”

The interesting thing about that post (besides the fact that the pendulum has swung back toward a more-diverse runway in 2018), is that I used the word “trailblazer” to describe the actions of an Aries model, even when I wasn’t discussing astrology.

Aries is the trailblazing sign. Yesterday, I posted about Aries icon William Shatner boldly leading Star Fleet into places where “no man has gone before.” While Yasmeen Ghauri wasn’t the first model with South Asian roots to grace the catwalks, she was the most notable “brown” model during the era of “Fashion File,” “Fashion Television” and “House of Style,” when these girls started to become household names.

I guess that I need to give credit where credit is due. Ten years ago, I mentioned that I wasn’t sure exactly how much she had to do with her own rise to the top. But she wouldn’t have got there without some major skills that helped her to push modeling into places it had never gone before. Just a couple of weeks ago, I heard Tyra Banks claim that Yasmeen Ghauri had the best runway walk of any model in history. I have to agree after watching old footage of the model slinking down the runway. There was never anyone quite like her, and she absolutely deserves the cult following that she enjoys to this day.