Alek Wek

Date

2013

Description

Creator of the image: Bennetton
Date of the image creation: 2013
Medium of the image: Photograph
Person depicted: Alek Wek

Born in 1977 in what is now South Sudan, Alek Wek moved to Britain, then the United States. She became a fashion model at age-18. In 2013 the billion-dollar global fashion corporation Benetton, a launched a new advertising campaign for their Spring catalogue. The company gathered a diverse group of attractive people from the fashion world to act as ‘brand ambassadors’ and showcase their clothing range. Alek Wek was one of them.

According to Alessandro Benneton, the company’s chairman and son of the founder, the campaign is based on ‘the iconic value of color — a founding value for United Colors of Benetton, and once again at the centre of our aesthetics and communications – to give a powerful assertion of the identity and excellence of this brand, which holds diversity as a value, and the unity of differences as a wealth to be treasured.’

The photograph was taken the same year that the eight-story Rana Plaza building collapsed in the Savar Upazila, Dhaka, Bangladesh, killing at least 1,130 people. Benetton attempted to deny having clothing made there, until undeniable evidence emerged, and thereafter they failed to pay any compensation to the victims’ families.

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