00:02Leah Kabeide from Ethiopia has long been among the highest earning top models from Africa.
00:08She had always dreamt of becoming a model, but the road to success was a rocky one. Yet,
00:14she has achieved her goals. I wanted to be a model when I was in Ethiopia as a young girl.
00:22I remember I think when I was maybe 14, 15, I thought it was just very glamorous and I used
00:29to watch all these old fashion videos, fashion show videos of like the big model, the supermodels
00:37at the time. And I thought, Oh, I would love to do that. But I mean, it was, it seemed
00:42really crazy
00:43at the time because I was like in Ethiopia and I didn't, I didn't, I didn't know if it was
00:48possible.
00:51She was discovered at 18 by a model scout in her hometown, Addis Abeba, and sent to Paris and New
00:57York. But transitioning from the dream to the reality of modeling was not easy.
01:05Everything is difficult. It's so competitive. It's one of the most competitive spaces, you know,
01:10and you're young and you don't really understand and you don't know anyone. And so it's tough.
01:17Of course, at the time, I mean, obviously being black didn't help.
01:21Yet after the turn of the millennium, Leah Cabeda joined Naomi Campbell as one of the few black
01:27models to appear in ad campaigns and on fashion magazine covers. How did she manage it?
01:37Why you, right? There's no logic to it. It's, you know, whatever you want to call beauty. It's very
01:43subjective. You know, it's timing. It's being at the right place at the right time. I mean, I remember at
01:48the beginning when I was younger, you know, you just sit around the phone waiting for somebody to
01:51call. That's the worst thing in the world, the worst thing in the world. And I think the minute
01:56you realize that, okay, I need to do something else with my life because this is going to kill me
02:01if
02:01I just sit around and be depressed. In 2007, Leah Cabeda launched her own ready-to-wear label,
02:08Lem Lem in Ethiopia, and became an entrepreneur. She makes an effort to support her countrymen and women
02:14and cultivate traditional crafts. Growing up in Ethiopia, I thought, you know,
02:20I want to give back if I have the chance. And it was the idea of trying to actually employ
02:24people
02:24and give people their jobs and they can earn their own income and then help their own families out.
02:30It's also was the idea of trying to preserve the art of weaving, which was our traditional way of
02:35making clothes and opening up that to more of an international market. Each and every garment is made by hand
02:44in Ethiopia and marketed all across the world. Leah models for her own label to set an example for
02:50more mature women in modeling. I don't think anybody thought that today would be like inclusive about
02:59age and inclusive about color and inclusive body shape. All these things, you know, they were not at
03:03all what we expected to happen. And then they are happening. My worry is that it has to stay,
03:12you know, and I don't know that yet. This is her true mission to prove that we don't have to
03:18be
03:19afraid of aging. I think as a woman, in a strange way, when you're aging, if you do it the
03:26right way,
03:27at least, I think you gain a lot of wisdom. And that's not said enough. And I don't think that's
03:33shown enough. I think there's a lot of fear about aging. And that's what we're bombarded with.
03:37But I think there's the other side is there. And the other side is not shown enough. And I think
03:41that would be nice to see. As a supermodel, entrepreneur and activist,
03:47Leah Cabeda can already look back on a lifetime of accomplishments.
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