Bold Standard

Moroccan model Hind Sahli is on a mission to effect change in the fashion industry and she’s leading by example

- Georgie Bradley

“I am not here to prove women wrong, but to show them that they can do something with their life if they want to”

Hind Sahli is a Muslim model with a moving mind. The Rabat-born, Casablanca-bred Moroccan 27-year-old is loaded with substantial soundbites. “I stepped out of the box and didn’t submit to the life I was supposed to lead,” she begins. Good start.

In the world of personalities, actors, singers and politicians who crowd the forefront of the public stage with powerful agendas precipitating social strata far and wide. The default positioning of fashion models however, is enforced anonymity. A face with no name. A fleeting figment of fantasy – not a mouth piece for game-changing conversation. Now, the fashion industry is in positive flux, commanding more space than ever before, driving dialogue to essential truths about our calcified views on normative beauty and how we can effect change. Hind is leading by example: “Being able to take a good photo isn’t enough. You have to have a brain.”

Hind and I are in a non-descript warehouse-turned film studio in Dubai’s Al Quoz and she’s pre make-up with mocha-luminous skin. We flop in unison into sunken bean bags and get stuck in.

Her small and careful giggles indicate some lingering traits of a formerly shy child. “Yes I was very quiet. I would follow my mother around like a shadow.” But when people asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up, she never flickered from one extreme to another, as is true for most children who want to be a doctor one day and an astronaut the next. “I always wanted to be a model. My mother would tell me that I looked like one and it stuck in my head so I would wear high heels and pretend I was on a runway. I may have been shy but that didn’t stop me.”