Iman’s First Trip to America Was Totally Illegal

Fashion is a force so strong that some people are willing to break the law for it. Just ask Iman, who admits her first time in America may not have been a completely legal visit. The legendary supermodel admitted to The Cut that as a youngster, still under the tender age of 18, she fibbed in order to get a passport to be able to enter the United States. “To leave Kenya to come to the United States, to get a passport, you had to be 18,” she said. “So I lied and said I was 19 to get the passport, because [otherwise] I had to have permission from my parents, and my parents would never have let me come.”

But like all of us who went behind our parents’ back as teenagers, she couldn’t keep the secret of her big, illegal trip to America safe from her parents. “You know how they found out? I was in Newsweek a week later. It’s the only magazine my father reads, and the next thing, he’s reading, and there’s a picture of me in New York, [saying,] ‘She’s the hottest model now.’” Oops! Hard to keep a secret when your teenage rebellion unwittingly makes you one of the most in-demand faces in the industry. 

[via The Cut]

 


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