ITUMELENG SEMOLI

ILLIANA STEVENS in Grade 10 has recently been selected as the winner of an Ambassador berth from ON POINT Lifestyle Magazine.  She will take part in various ON POINT lifestyle projects and marketing and advertising campaigns, while also being featured in a special edition of ON POINT Lifestyle Magazine.

Illiana started modelling at VMODELS Agency in February last year. Originally, she did it just for fun and to give it a shot, to see what’s it’s all about. What she didn’t expect was that it would become her biggest passion and one of the most important activities in her life.

To begin with, it was much more difficult than she had anticipated. The technique behind walking the runway and posing for a photoshoot was insanely difficult, way beyond what she had imagined it to be.

Illiana saw Lockdown as an opportunity and she started investing more time and effort into becoming the best that she could. When quarantine ended, she completed her first evaluation and still didn’t do very well, but she didn’t let that stop her. She continued to improve and by the end of the year, she won the awards as Best Runway Model of 2020 and Best Photographic Model of 2020.

These achievements sparked a passion in her that she didn’t know was there. She found her style and her own look, went against the norms of the modelling world, and skyrocketed from thereon.

What started as a hobby, has now become something she does to try and inspire other young girls to be who they want to be regardless of everyone else’s opinions and judgment; to show them that you can achieve your dreams while still being yourself. She intends to become a national model in Cape Town or Johannesburg after she has matriculated and an international model thereafter. Her goal is to walk in the New York and Paris Fashion Weeks.