African models are beginning to take their rightful place in the industry, and entrepreneurs like Elizabeth Isiorho are at the forefront in contributing their quota to making this happen. Through her modeling agency, Beth Model Management Africa, she has successfully put African faces on the global stage.
A former beauty queen herself, Elizabeth Isiorho has mastered the elements of the modeling industry and the expectations that come with it. Since 2004 when she started her modeling agency, she has successfully make the dreams of many African models come true by representing top international brands.
According to reports, she is cooking up something even more significant with her new Future Face Africa project, which she says will be a foremost pan-African talent show aimed at discovering African faces that can represent the continent on the biggest stages.
“Models will be given a chance to win a two-year international modeling contract with a top modeling agency, offering hopefuls not just a launchpad but a career on the world stage,” she said in an interview earlier this month.
Growing up, Elizabeth Isiorho was greatly inspired by her mother, a fashion enthusiast and always compared her daughter to the supermodel – Naomi Campbell. As fate would have it, not only did she grow up to be a Beauty Queen and model herself, she is close friends with Naomi Campbell.
“A friend of mine showed me some magazines that had Miss Nigeria UK, and she said I should go for it. I was extremely shy but I went for the 10-day boot camp, and on the ninth day, I said ‘this is not for me, I’m not walking that stage in a bikini’ and I said to my mum ‘I am not doing it anymore’. My mum said she had bought her ticket to London to come and surprise me on stage so I should stick it out. I did and I won the competition, to my surprise,” Elizabeth Isiorho recalls winning her first Beauty Pageant.
After winning the pageant, she returned to Nigeria in 2003 and noticed a huge divide between Nigeria and the rest of the world when it comes to modeling, despite the abundance of potentials in the country.
“Because I won Miss Nigeria UK, I was very popular when I came back to Nigeria and I said to myself ‘let me get a proper agency to manage me’. But there was none back then. I did my research and I went to companies and one company told me to just drop my CD. So, there was no modeling agency in Nigeria. I tried going to the big agencies in London that work with me today but I didn’t get far.
“When I started, I thought it would be easy but the Nigerian market was very difficult. I am talking about 2004 when parents are thinking a certain way and parents don’t want their kids to model. I found a few faces and the issue I had was trying to convince the parents that it was not about prostitution. That was the negative stereotype because they felt they exposed their bodies etc.
“The other issue was trying to sign contracts with models when we find the right faces. People were scared to sign in Nigeria whereas in London, people were excited to sign with an agency,” says Isiorho.
Due to the lack of demand for African models at the time, Isiorho decided to start a model convention. Her thinking was simple. If the international fashion industry would not accept African models, she would bring them to Africa to see the untapped potential for themselves.
“So, I sent them emails and out of 11 agencies, nine of them replied to say they were coming and one of the agencies, which was Elite Models, said ‘we have a model search and would like you to be a part of it’.”
“That was my biggest breakthrough because as an agency, for you to partner with one of the biggest modeling agencies in the world is a big deal, and we worked together for 13 years. We discovered many stars like Mayowa Nicholas, Davidson Obennebo, Chika Emmanuella, Victor Ndigwe, Tobi Momoh, who are all on global campaigns,” says Isiorho.
Her resilience has not gone unnoticed amongst her peers. “I have worked with Beth Models since the company’s inception and I’m filled with pride. The investment Elizabeth has made in the modeling industry across Africa is beyond glamorizing fashion; it’s the wider role the agency plays in changing stereotypes about working with Africans, giving African creatives a voice and ensuring African youth are empowered socio-economically,” says Omoyemi Akerele, the founder of Lagos Fashion Week.
