Aussie model Duckie Thot has had one hell of a 12 months. In September last year, she booked her first ever official runway show: Kanye West’s SS17 Yeezy show.
Over the next few months, she modelled for Naeem Khan, Baja East, Norma Kamali and Ulyana Sergeenko; in July, she was named the titular character in Tim Walker‘s all-black reimagining of Alice in Wonderland for the 2018 Pirelli calendar; in August, she was shot by Mario Testino for V Magazine; and most recently, she appeared as one of the faces of Rihanna‘s new make-up line, Fenty Beauty.
And now? She’s on the cover of Paper Magazine, looking unfathomably fierce and 100% embodying the ‘Black Barbie‘ nickname some of her fans have bestowed on her. (She’s a fan of it, fyi.)
But you might also remember Duckie from cycle eight of Australia’s Next Top Model. She came third, but between that show airing (in 2013) and booking the Yeezus gig (in 2016), almost seemed to disappear from the modelling industry altogether.
It turns out that Australia’s unwillingness to cast black models was the cause here, rather than Duckie taking the time out of her own accord. In her cover interview with Paper Magazine, she made a powerful point about the lack of diversity in Australia, saying that she literally had to move to New York City to find work.
“[I] stuck with it for two years [but] I literally got nothing,” she says, of modelling in Australia after ANTM. “I didn’t understand why, but I wasn’t getting any work.”
“I think it was a very confusing part of my life for me. I was just this little [black] girl in Australia just being like, ‘Oh yeah, I want to do modelling,’ but [while also] being in a country that doesn’t promote black models. It was kind of like a mindfuck all in itself anyways, so I didn’t really get how far I was going to go with it.
“I remember running on the treadmill in Australia and thinking, ‘You should be running on the treadmill in New York’. That’s literally what I was thinking! I just thought — why am I here? So I was just like, ‘Let me make the executive decision to move to New York. I’m not getting my coins in Australia!’”
Our loss is America’s gain, tbh. Duckie is absolutely killing it right now, and she’s only going up.
Read her full cover interview over at Paper now.
