Spark My Nature, Sugar Fly With Me

i-D magazine's 30th Anniversary issue (with 3 covers - Gaga, Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell) features a huge series of short interviews with some of the most influential people in the fashion, music, television and film industry. It also features an incredibly sharp and powerful editorial starring Britain's biggest supermodel exports, Moss and Campbell. The shoot is likely to become immediately iconic, the concept being Naomi, a black model, wearing white and Kate, a white model, wearing black.

In each interview the interviewee is asked which i-D cover in the 30 year history is their favourite, so I thought I'd share mine with you -

The P.Y.T. issue, September 2009

Chanel Iman, Sessilee Lopez, Jourdan Dunn and Arlenis Sosa

The four beauties that grace the cover represent a sense of camaraderie. Making it as a model when you're of African descent isn't the easiest feat and doesn't happen to everyone. They are a success story, tall, beautiful, successful and black, and those of you who know me well, know that I love my black girls. In this issue, which was dedicated to the King of Pop Michael Jackson, there's a true sense of diversity. Fashion-forward cultural eclectica at its finest. I love the make-up, the colours, the styling, the editorials inside the issue and the feeling I got when I first read it. It is in fact one of the very few magazines that I've kept and still have it in my bedroom at my parent's house to this day.

My mother adores African culture and adores dark skin. I grew up surrounded by images my mother would show me of striking African women some models, some actresses, singers and some relative unknowns too. (I also grew up doing Cindy Crawford workout videos with my mother, but that's another story). The image below of Alek Wek has always stayed with me and always reminds me of my mother and her reaction of a gasp and "Isn't this beautiful?"

Strong, independent, ethnic and fabulously accessorised!

Snaps for Alek.