More Than Face Value: Adwoa Aboah Joins Forces With Jo Malone London To Advocate For Mental Health Awareness
From redefining beauty standards to leading the charge on mental health awareness, international supermodel, Adwoa Aboah has been a change-maker since breaking into the fashion industry. Recently she teamed up with Jo Malone London, a kindred spirit brand that is aligned with her empowering message of resilience
Adwoa Aboah is one of the most recognisable faces in fashion. With her freckled features, bee-stung lips, and soulful eyes, she has a visage that lingers in the mind. She has graced the covers of countless magazines and has appeared on billboards across the globe – she even has her own Barbie.
Over the years, she began to leverage her fame to advocate for mental health. She’s been vocal about her personal battle with addiction, depression, bipolar disorder and dyslexia, in part to help others to feel less isolated but also to destigmatise these issues. She calls herself an activist first and a model second and is intentional about affiliating herself with brands that espouse her mission to champion mental health. In 2022, Jo Malone London announced Adwoa as their global ambassador and face for their cult favourite, English Pear & Freesia scent. The partnership is a perfect fit given the company’s longstanding engagement in mental health advocacy – to date, they’ve donated £3 million [Dhs13,663,340] to the cause.
Born into an affluent family to a white-British mother and black-Ghanian father, attending an elite (predominantly white) boarding school and now being at the forefront of an industry that is known to be deliberately exclusionary – Adwoa’s life is replete with dismaying paradoxes – about which she is astutely aware and highly articulate. One thing that is crystal clear is her grueling self-growth journey has honed a deep self-assuredness and hardwon love for life. A state of being that, in the past, might have seemed completely out of reach.
Harper’s Bazaar Arabia (HBA): What made you want to work with Jo Malone London?
Adwoa Aboah(AA): First and foremost it’s the shared values. When you find a brand that has a bigger reason for collaborating, that’s always so special, and it’s the way I try to work these days. If you want me to come and talk about mental health, bring my personality, and put my soul into this, then our values have to align. And if you want me to bring my community, it’s even more important.
HBA: Having this open dialogue with your fan base is invaluable and perhaps why Jo Malone London has tapped you to represent the brand…
AA: If I’m being affected as a 30-year-old by the things that I see in the industry, then I can’t even imagine what a 17-year-old who doesn’t get to compartmentalise what’s real and what’s not real must feel. Even knowing this, I still have days when I feel awful about myself – that powers me forward. It’s important to speak about [the fashion industry] realistically. I have no regrets. I love what I do, and I’m very lucky. But when someone asks me about [modeling], I’m going to be honest because otherwise, they’re going to have a rose-tinted idea of what it’s like.
HBA: What mark do you hope to leave on the beauty industry?
AA: I would love to be remembered as someone who brought something aesthetically raw and honest to the conversation. As someone who’s not perfect, who’s flawed, but who was celebrated because of those things. Everyone has their part to play in the conversation of what beauty means, and I would like to be the person who took those conversations to a deeper level.
HBA: Tell us about Gurls Talk, the organisation you founded to create safe spaces for girls to share their experiences and struggles.
AA: I started it back in 2015. It’s a community-led organisation dedicated to the well-being and mental health of young women and girls. I love it. It’s all I can think about. It’s the best thing in my life and the hardest. Our mission is to shine a light on lived experience and storytelling. We do in-person events, we have a clinical advisor, we create resources, and we have our own podcast and an ambassador program. But we’re predominantly creating a safe space where girls can discuss these topics.
HBA: How does aligning yourself with a brand like Jo Malone London fit with your work on mental health?
AA: One of my favourite things that we’ve done so far is the amazing mental health panel we had to launch our collaboration. They understand that you can sell products and say something important, and we’re going to see more of that.
HBA: Do you have advice for young girls looking to become models?
The name of the game is rejection – you need to be up for that! I still get rejected! And of course, I’m coming at this from a more privileged place, having had success, which comes with a better way of handling rejection. It’s not always about what you look like, it’s actually out of your control – it’s what I’m learning now. It’s been quite a nice, revolutionary way of thinking. There are things that I cannot change about myself, but what I can do is be a great person to be around, show up, be kind, have great manners, know how to talk to people, and have interests outside of the industry. All these things are really important.
From the Harper’s Bazaar Arabia’s June 2023 Issue