About Alek Wek When Elle chose Alek Wek for the cover of their November 1997 issue, they were taking what many magazines considered a risk: a dark-skinned African girl on your cover did not, theoretically, sell issues. The result, however, was monumental reader response with letters-to-the-editor from women and men ecstatic about seeing the standards of beauty in fashion redefined.
As Oprah commented when Alek appeared on her show, "If you'd been on the cover of a magazine when I was growing up, I would have had a different concept of who I was." Born in Southern Sudan, Alek was raised as a part of the Dinka tribe. At fourteen the civil war forced her to flee to London with her younger sister, where they were later joined by their mother and siblings.
