Yasmin Warsame is in a midtown ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ park doing yoga when she takes a break to talk about her life as a supermodel. You can hear the serenity and poise in her voice, a deep and rounded intonation with just a trace of British accent around the edges.
Now 48, Warsame has seen her modelling career stretch over a quarter century. She’s bridged entire generations of fashion, from Tom Ford’s Gucci and Karl Lagerfeld’s Chanel in the late 1990s to Hedi Slimane’s Saint Laurent and Maximilian Davis’s Ferragamo in recent seasons.
Warsame has been part of so many major fashion moments that for her, looking at her runway images through the years is “like a time capsule, different stages and different shows marking moments of time in my life.â€
Yasmin Warsame wears a Fendi jacket, shirt, skirt, boots, . Van Cleef & Arpels rings, . Styling: Zeina Esmail/P1M. Hair and makeup: Robert Weir/Cadre Artist Management.
Erin LeydonWarsame was “discovered†by a modelling agent while walking along Queen Street West with some friends, off-duty from her job as a medical administrator and fresh out of psychology studies at college. She was 22, and five months pregnant. “I started when models used to retire,†she said.
Early on, Warsame got a few jobs in Canada, including the Sears catalogue, but the industry here wasn’t quite ready to take a chance on a Black woman for the high-fashion work she suited. It was only after she left to work internationally and was embraced by European tastemakers that she was noticed at home. “When I came back, Canada gave me the love. It was like people were seeing me through new lenses.â€
Working at the level she did is a grind — dozens of shows a season, constant travel — especially for a young mother. Warsame has since found much more balance in the modelling she does today. “It’s a great pace where I can choose to do just my favourite things,†she said. “It’s not walking 20 shows in a fashion week.â€
Yasmin Warsame wears a Gucci jacket, shorts and necklace, .
Erin LeydonThat Warsame and her peers — Naomi Campbell, Kate Moss, Christy Turlington — are still in demand for modelling contracts into their 40s and 50s is quite a new phenomenon. But then, a lot of things have changed since the late ’90s, Warsame points out, citing the progress of representation in ethnicity, size, gender and age that we now see on catwalks, in advertisements and editorial spreads.
Models who have a lot going on in their interior world are the ones who can project that indefinable “it†factor: They somehow embody a woman that you aspire to be. Warsame welcomes the new embrace of older models, saying it always seemed a shame that just when women hit the age where they became most interesting, clients stopped hiring them.
With age comes experience. “When you have that 20-plus years under your belt, you show up on set differently than a young girl,†said Warsame. “You are confident, in tune, comfortable.â€
She has become confident with expanding her horizons beyond fashion, too. Her first foray into acting was for (2021), a French-Somali-Finnish film shot in Djibouti over 21 days. “We were there with all these Finnish people in East Africa,†said Warsame, who felt the familiar thrill of “being in the zone†on set with a creative team. She plays the titular character, Nasra, in the love story and meditation on family amid impossible circumstances of poverty and illness. “It was an intense experience,†she said. “I loved it.†Critics did too; she earned rave reviews.
Warsame was born in Somalia, the youngest of 21 children on her father’s side. “My father, as is custom, had four wives. My mother was the youngest. I am the last-born surviving child of the 12 children she had.†She left Somalia at age five and passed through several countries — Zambia, Kenya — before spending much of her childhood in London.
Yasmin Warsame wears a Chanel top, pants and jewellery,
Erin LeydonShe emigrated to ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ in her teens, following in the footsteps of older siblings. There she entered what she calls a bubble. “Children born in a Somali household, in that house you are in a community bubble,†she said. “You are not like them,†— here, she’s referring to Canadian kids — “and you are not full Somalis. You are in-between.â€
Warsame deeply respects her communities. “I see the beauty in both, in this culture and that culture,†she said. “I had the pleasure of being multicultural, born in one place, raised in another.†But it isn’t as easy for everyone to bridge that gap, which is why Warsame has long focused her advocacy and activism on working with Somali youth in Canada. She believes therapy is essential to process trauma and help kids navigate the in-between.
Warsame has spent much of her adult life travelling internationally, working in all the fashion capitals and shooting on locations such as Namibia, Mexico and South Africa, which are standout memories from her portfolio. “I especially love the desert,†she said. “It is so quiet and loud all at once.†She recently spent an extended stint in Hawaii with her family but returned to Canada amid the 2023 wildfires.
“ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ has a sense of power over me, she brings me back home,†said Warsame. Her 25-year-old son, Hamza, recently graduated from ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ Metropolitan University in aerospace engineering; her daughter, Maya, 8, just started grade 3. (She’s named for Maya Angelou, who for Warsame “is like the grandmother who adopted me, well at least in my mind.â€)
Yasmin Warsame wears a Cos top and skirt, cos.comt. Fendi boots, .
Erin LeydonHer kids aren’t impressed by the glamorous side of mom’s life. “It could be a Vogue shoot, but my son will just say, yeah, I’m at work,†Warsame said. She did take Maya to fashion week in Milan, where she sat in the audience for a runway show. “She said it was not my best walk.†Kids! They will humble you every time. Mostly, Warsame said, they like it when she takes off her makeup when she comes home from set, so she looks like Mom again.
Warsame’s next chapter will be in the wellness and yoga space; she hopes to open a studio. “My mother was a healer,†she said. “Neighbours would come by and she would get things from her garden to help them.â€
She believes healing is about really asking ourselves, “Who am I?†“We are forever evolving, forever changing, but our essence: We had it when we were born,†Warsame said. When we grow up and grow older, “we move toward truth. There are two options: We can run from our shadows, which is quite impossible, or we can become friends with them.â€
Warsame told me that in Somalia, they don’t mark birthdays. “We have three stages: young girl, then the reproduction time, then the period after you stop having children. Then you become a wisdom woman,†she said. “Wisdom women are very respected. You would get a smack if you ever said anything wrong or talked back [to them].â€
Now that she’s nearing this stage of life herself, Warsame feels “a settling†within herself. “I love feisty old ladies with that don’t-care attitude,†she said. “I’m coming now into my own don’t-care zone.”
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