26 ELLECANADA.COM
PHOTOGRAPHY,^ NORMAN^ WONGVanessa Craft
Follow me on Instagram and Twitter @vanessacraftEditor’s Note
I WAS A LITTLE ON EDGE the day of our September
cover shoot. Clouds of fragrant smoke were billowing
off the barbecue that sat on the sidewalk just outside the
front door of Raps, a Jamaican restaurant on Eglinton
West in Toronto. Standing next to this smouldering
metal grill? Our cover stars, model Winnie Harlow and
actor Stephan James, wearing head-to-toe ripped-from-
the-runway Valentino. Getting the shot had become an
exercise in patience. A crowd had gathered, alternately
walking through the frame and chatting on their phones
in the background of the set, waving to Winnie and tak-
ing pictures that were likely to be leaked on the internet.
Outwardly, I was smiling; inwardly, I was calculating
the dry-cleaning costs that would be necessary to get the
aroma of spicy jerk chicken out of the Valentino.
Stephan was feeling the heat—not from the pressure
of the occasion (although he is the first man to appear
on an ELLE Canada cover) but because it was 32ºC and
he’d been standing in the laser-hot sun for hours wearing
first a fully lined coat and then a three-piece wool suit.
His core temperature must have been approaching broil
status, but he looked so calm you’d never have known
it. He really is a world-class actor.
As for Winnie? I’d summoned a trailer load of
Gatorade, but she waved it off with a smile. Like a queenbasking in the heat, she danced with the kids from the
Toronto Revellers mas band, who had joined us, taking a
few moments to dote on each of them. She has, after all,
delivered on photo shoots in literal deserts and oceans,
so a hot city block was all in a day’s work for her.
The rest of us were tripping, though—we were
shooting our cover a week after the Raptors parade,
when Toronto was still vibrating from the historic NBA
Finals win, when outsiders had accomplished the impos-
sible. Today, I see Winnie and Stephan, two Jamaican-
Canadians with very humble beginnings, in much the
same way: Their careers began when they pulled off
wins against the odds. In their respective fields of fash-
ion and film, they are the new royalty—the queen and
king of self-made success representing Canada on an
international scale. Life has taken them across the globe,
but, as the saying goes, there’s no place like home.