Anok Yai

Anok Yai is an American fashion model, born in Cairo in 1997 and raised in New Hampshire, who walked the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show in New York in 2024 and again in 2025. Her place in this encyclopedia comes from that runway; her reputation in the wider industry was made on high-fashion catwalks, beginning with a Prada show in 2018.

A homecoming photograph, October 2017

Yai was born in Cairo after her family left Sudan, and moved with them to Manchester, New Hampshire, when she was three. She went to Manchester High School West and then to Plymouth State University, where she studied biochemistry with the aim of becoming a doctor.

In October 2017 she attended the homecoming at Howard University in Washington. The photographer Steve Hall, who posts as theSUNK, took her picture and put it on Instagram, where it passed 20,000 likes. Agencies followed the post. She signed with Next Model Management after the agency kept calling for several weeks. She is now represented by IMG Models in New York and other agencies in Europe.

Opening Prada, February 2018

About four months after the photograph, Yai opened Prada's show in Milan. She was the first Sudanese model to open for the house and the second Black model to do so, after Naomi Campbell in 1997. The earlier version of this page said she was the first Black model to open Prada in 25 years; the gap was about twenty years, and Campbell was the precedent.

Her comment at the time was measured. "It was an honor and I'm proud that I was the one chosen to open, but this is bigger than me," she said.

Campaigns followed quickly. Estee Lauder signed her in July 2018, and she has since worked for Alexander McQueen, Versace, Louis Vuitton, Tiffany and Nike's collaboration with Givenchy. W magazine described her as a supermodel in September 2022, and TIME put her on its 2026 list of the 100 most influential people.

Anok Yai on the Victoria's Secret runway

The lingerie chapter came later. When Victoria's Secret brought its runway show back on October 15, 2024, after a five-year pause, Yai was in the cast, alongside models including Valentina Sampaio. She returned for the 2025 show, appearing in two segments, Bombshell and Black Tie.

The revived show was built around a broader cast than the Angel-era productions, and Yai's booking fits that pattern: a model whose standing came from Milan and Paris, brought in to give a mall brand some of that authority. She has no record as a contracted Angel or as a long-term face of a lingerie label, and her career remains centered on luxury fashion and beauty contracts.

Last updated October 7, 2026