KIARA KABUKURU

Clad in a pair of '70s inspired leather pants, Kiara Kabukuru stomped to the beats of a live jazz performance as she opened Tommy Hilfiger and Zendaya’s TommyxZendaya Spring 2020 show, held in Harlem’s iconic Apollo Theatre during New York Fashion Week last September. During the show, the 44-year-old model of Ugandan heritage led a group of diverse models who walked the show, with appearances from 67-year-old Joani Johnson, a heavily pregnant Ashley Graham and Alek Wek.

For an industry with an insatiable obsession with novelty and perfection, this '70s-city-street-themed show was not just fun to watch, but also a breath of fresh air. That it was a famous Ugandan model from the '90s who opened the show made the whole extravaganza an even bigger deal. Kabukuru is not new to this; she opened a slew of shows back in her heyday, her most nerve wracking experience being a show for designer John Galliano. “He (Galliano) told me that I’d be opening the show for his cruise collection here in New York, which was the iconic primitive show that they did, with the bones and all these things. I was actually gonna come up from underground, and open a trap door to come into this huge audience. I had not opened a show like that before,” she told Vogue Italia in an interview.

However, her TommyxZendaya appearance was a fresh new adventure. Having been absent from the runway for over 20 years, and returning not just to walk, but to open a show as buzzy as Tommy Hilfiger’s, at a time when models are scouted off Instagram and become famous without doing much, this was a walk of triumph. Inviting her back just for this show was proof that she had left an indelible mark on the industry despite the hiatus.

Kabukuru, best known as a CoverGirl Cosmetics model, was born Alice Kabukuru on July 31, 1975 in Kampala, Uganda, and hails from Ankole. At the age of 16, she was discovered by photographer Bill Bodwell in a Los Angeles shopping centre, and her exotic African allure immediately caught the attention of bookers. It is then that her name was changed from Alice to Kiara at the suggestion of her then agent at Ford models, who felt ‘Kiara’ sounded more exotic.

It’s hard to imagine anyone thinking that Kabukuru needed to be more exotic. Her father, a very wealthy and powerful man in Uganda, was marked for assassination for being against the regime. In 1980, her parents fled the country, and Kabukuru and her three siblings and grandparents were smuggled into Kenya. A year later, when she was six, Amnesty International helped reunite the family in Los Angeles, but the whole family dynamic had changed. Her father had a nervous breakdown and they all went into survival mode. She has famously said that from a young age, she had her sights set on New York, because that’s what

Above:

Kabukuru walks the TommyxZendaya Spring 2020 show at the iconic Apollo Theatre ‘different’ people did, and she was going to be ‘different’.

Growing up, she said, “Everybody started telling me that I should be a model.” Everyone, that is, except her parents. “I was skinny, I was boyish, I thought I just didn’t have what they considered beautiful.” But Boldwell thought differently.

Her first booking was for a Coca-Cola commercial. “I had this short little Afro. The ad said they were looking for the classic all-American beauty, and I thought to myself, Hey!” she said. This Coke commercial led to her first job in New York, a Levi’s ad shot by Albert Watson. She was then sent around to the big design houses. Her consummate professionalism and youthful spirit immediately won the hearts of the industry’s most esteemed photographers and designers.

On one of her first nights out in the city, she ended up in the East Village at Café Tabac, where supermodels Christy Turlington, Naomi Campbell, Stephanie Seymour and Elaine Irwin were all seated together at a table. “It was such a moment for me,” Kabukuru said. “Like, I’m in New York! With these women! And I’m actually modelling!”

It was Tom Ford, then creative director of Gucci, who ushered the Ugandan newcomer into the spotlight with a career-changing opportunity as the face of the Italian brand. He booked her exclusively for the Gucci shows in Milan and the brand’s advertising campaign.

She then earned her stripes walking every show from Calvin Klein, Dior, Balmain, Moschino, Dolce & Gabbana, Alexander McQueen, Yves Saint Laurent to Versace, and appearing on covers of top-tier fashion publications such as Vogue Germany, Elle, Spanish Vogue, I-D and a solo appearance on the July 1997 cover of American Vogue photographed by Steven Meisel. She went ahead to land multiple lucrative beauty campaigns for L’Oreal and CoverGirl, a nomination as VH1’s Model Of The Year, and appearances on the Oprah Winfrey Show and America’s Next Top Model.

In 2000, as her career was at its peak, the model suffered a horrific accident where she was hit by an 18-wheeler truck whilst cycling on the streets of New York City. It was Memorial Day weekend and her boyfriend was on his way from London to visit her in

“It was such a moment for me, like, I’m in New York! With these women! And I’m actually modelling!”

New York. She was riding her new bicycle to pick up candles and flowers when tragedy befell her. The truck, which was manned by an unlicensed driver, slammed into her, dragging her along the pavement. In utter pain and shock, Kabukuru picked her teeth off the ground when the truck finally stopped.

At the hospital, she said, “Everybody was looking at me like, ‘Oh, my God.’ And nobody would bring me a mirror.”

The skin on her arms and back had been ripped off. Her jaw, teeth, and gums had to be reconstructed. Her ribs, pelvis, sacrum, pubic bone and right ankle were broken. She was in excruciating pain and went through multiple surgeries. It would take seven reconstructive surgeries to rebuild her jaw alone. She spent the next five years in Los Angeles, close to her family, rebuilding her life through intensive physical rehab, therapy, meditation and yoga. Miraculously, her skin healed without any visible scarring.

Eight years later, with encouragement from supermodel Gisele Bündchen, her close friend of over 20 years, she slowly bounced back, appearing in the iconic all-black issue of Vogue Italia in 2008. She also signed a new contract with CoverGirl. These were still baby steps back into a career that had given her everything, but she was still a bit shell-shocked and not ready to commit. Instead, she studied acting and helped start a nonprofit, Women for the World, of which she was the vice president.

The stunning 5’9” tall supermodel had nothing but lessons from the tumultuous experience. In a chat with Bundchen for CR Fashion Book, she talked about how she managed to smile even when all her front teeth were gone.

“I remember feeling grateful. I really thought it was the end, and when it wasn’t, I felt really lucky to be alive. It also gave me access to all the hurt I was carrying. I was surprised to find that I was upset about my childhood in Uganda, which was filled with the violence of war and of the domestic variety. Maybe it’s my inquisitiveness and fascination with the psyche, but I chose to get to the bottom of it, and at times I felt so lost having dug all this stuff up. But something kept me going, I believed with faith that I would find my purpose through this mining,” she intimated. Her purpose now is “forgiveness and unconditional love, to transcend all these traumatic events in my life. No matter what I’m doing, the question is always, how I can give unconditional love in that moment.”

In 2010, she returned to her apartment in Manhattan, although with trepidation, because she was so freaked out about the city. Here, she learned of the work of Momentum Bike Clubs, which provides mentoring services to at-risk youth, encouraging healthy exercise while forging positive relationships. She became drawn to their good work and decided to get on a bicycle for the first time since her accident, to ride with the children. Since she first connected with Momentum Bike Clubs in 2011, she has made several trips to the Upstate to ride with the club’s youth, sharing her story of resilience and hope.

She has also been making quiet but calculated steps back into the fashion industry. She walked Tom Ford’s Fall 2013 show, appeared in editorials for W Magazine, Muse, CR Fashion Book, American Vogue, and advertising campaigns for the now defunct Barneys New York and Avon. All these projects were done between 2013 and 2015.

She reappeared to open the TommyxZendaya Spring 2020 show, before starring on the cover of Dior’s Dior Moments Of Joy Book 2019 in October, modelling a tiger print jacket designed by John Galliano. All this was done quietly with the same work ethic of the models of the ‘90s, working without making noise about what she was doing. She’s a very private person and is not on social media.

She made a trip to Uganda to document her history as part of her efforts to write a memoir. “That trip was sensory overload for me,” she told Bündchen. “I learned that my great- grandfather chose to die of starvation, letting my great-grandmother and grandfather have the little food they had. My grandfather then went on to have 16 children. I have 60 first cousins on my mom’s side. So my great-grandfather’s sacrifice affected a lot of people. The most important thing I took away from that was how many people lived, died, struggled, sacrificed, and hustled for me to be here. I left feeling very lucky.”