this generation is that everyone’s so fearless and everyone has a voice –
people are not gonna let things slide anymore. I don’t believe that it can
go backwards, because people won’t allow it.”
The next frontier in the fight for fashion equality? Diversity off the catwalk:
“Seeing more stylists of colour, designers, make-up artists, hairstylists,
photographers... all of that.” She is also keen to see the end of, what she believes
is, brands generating social-media hysteria – and, therefore, column inches- with intentionally offensive apparel. “I just can’t get my head around people
putting something out there that is so blatantly offensive, where they had
meetings, there were approvals... it blows my mind. I’m just thinking, ‘Clearly
you know what you’re doing, and this is the route you guys want to go?’”
Perhaps she draws this conclusion because she understands the power
of social media first-hand. It has been integral to brand Jourdan- she has 285,000 followers on Twitter and 2.3 million on Instagram.
Though she’s noticeably less active these days than in her early-
2010s heyday. Back then, she says, she would often type in her name,
“searching for negativity”. She has since decided that others’ opinions of
her are not her business, turned off her notifications and thinks that
Instagram’s current experiment with hiding the number of likes on posts in
certain countries is a “healthy thing that will take the pressure off ”.
Her issue isn’t just with trolls. Recently, Dunn has begun to question if
constantly being showered with praise by strangers is a good thing. “That’s
all feeding into the ego,” she says matter-of-factly. “But I know when it
creeps up, I know how to shut it down, I know not to entertain it.”
She is big on boundaries, boundaries that she extends to her son. He doesn’t
have social media himself (“He has asked me, and I said, ‘Absolutely not!’”)
but used to make semi-regular appearances on her pages – something she
has now decided against, “because it does have an effect on him. People
noticing and recognising him. It can be a lot for him.” Riley also has sickle
cell anaemia. Alongside raising him, she is an ambassador for the Sickle Cell
Disease Association of America and heavily involved with the Sickle Cell
Society in the UK, regularly fundraising and hosting charity events.
When she discovered she was pregnant, at age 18, she was worried about
the reaction from both her family and the industry. She needn’t have been - at her seven-month mark, she walked for Jean Paul Gaultier in a cone-bra
corset custom-made to accommodate her bump, and felt no pressure from
her agency to return to work quickly. When she did, after nine months, and
still breastfeeding, there was a wealth of support for her.
Growing up in the west London suburb of Greenford, with her receptionist
mother and two younger brothers, Dunn was regularly teased for her “chicken
legs”. Even though she has made a career from her beauty, insecurities are
still there. With demand for Brazilian butt lifts at an all-time high and
“curviness” being a popular body goal in and outside of the black community,
she says body image is something she still struggles with.
“Being a young girl, growing up in the industry and having your insecurities
get you jobs – it’s highlighted,” she says. “Being Caribbean, everybody in my
family has curves. My mum is curvy, my cousins. Then seeing music videos...
being at home and pretending I’m a video girl, then realising I can’t be a
video girl because I ain’t got that to be backing it up, but, whatever, I’m going
to still shake it! That was definitely a thing. When I was younger, I was
actually thinking of having calf implants.”
Earlier this year, Dunn addressed her struggles with anxiety in an Instagram
post and later penned an open letter about depression on the platform. She
and Riley were the faces of American designer Brandon Maxwell’s spring/
summer 2018 campaign, and the model was candid about her conflicting
feelings post-shoot. She shared that she felt “overwhelmed with emotions”
watching the footage back, having been in a deep state of self-doubt and
depression just before it. She makes it clear that those feelings are still there - “I’m really going through it,” she says. Having spent the best part of her
career as a voice for others, she is relishing finally putting herself first. She
is done playing by other people’s rules. “It’s so exhausting pretending.”
Pretence is the one look that Dunn simply cannot pull off. And thank
goodness for that. n
MARC JACOBS A/W 2007 JEAN PAUL GAULTIER S/S 2010PRADA A/W 2008
DIOR COUTURE S/S 2009BURBERRY PRORSUM S/S 2012BALMAIN A/W 2015VERSACE COUTURE S/S 2015MARC JACOBS S/S 2017JEREMY SCOTT S/S 2018MOSCHINO A/W 2019CALVIN KLEIN S/S 2009PHILIP TREACY S/S 2013VALENTINO COUTURE A/W 2011BURBERRY S/S 2019
NICK KNIGHT; JASON LLOYD-EVANS; MITCHELL SAMS; FIRSTVIEW.COM; GORUNWAY; IMAXTREE.COM11-19-Well-JourdanDunn.indd 204 06/09/2019 12:43