Atong arjok biography of donald

In October, the phones rang less. On November 9, they flatlined. All over New York, people were walking around teary-eyed, but at Trump Models’s airy white office in SoHo, things were even bleaker. “It was like a cemetery,” said one source. In the dead quiet, one word nevertheless felt unbearably loud, printed in giant lime-green capital letters on the glass entryway: TRUMP.

For most of its existence, the boutique agency had a staff of eight to ten bookers, an apartment for models to live in in the East Village, and a roster of about 150 beautiful but not unusually famous girls from around the world – in other words, a fairly standard operation. And like most of New York City, the team at Trump never expected their namesake to win. “I thought the whole thing was a joke,” said Atong Arjok, a former Trump model who is also a refugee, having immigrated from Sudan to California as a child. “It was hard to wrap my mind around. This is a name that opposes everything I am.”

Last month, Trump Models, officially called Trump Model Management, sent out a letter to clients explaining the reasons for its closure, citing the larger Trump Organization’s desire to focus on core businesses like real estate, golf, and hospitality. Reached by phone last week, a rep confirmed that the agency is technically not operating, and will officially shutter its doors at the end of May. The story of the agency’s closure is, in one sense, straightforward: why would a President continue to own a modeling agency? But it’s also a parable of a new reality for fashion, whose relative insulation from politics was punctured in November when an insider was elected president. The agency, founded in 1999, is just one of Trump’s many connections to the industry. There are also the Miss Universe and Miss USA pageants, which he sold in 2015, the clothing lines, the daughters who’ve spent time on catwalks, and the long list of

She’s snagged a major fashion campaign with Pharrell Williams’ Adidas “Pink Beach” line this year, and worked with the cosmetics company Revlon as 2015 came to a close. The South Sudanese stunner Nyamuoch Girwath speaks to Okayafrica about assimilation and fashion favorites.

“It’s amazing that my first campaign embodied everything that I feel like I try to put out in the universe: very positive, all about love and connecting and being one,” Nyamuoch says. Her co-star in the campaign, Nykhor Paul, made headlines after penning a tough letter on the lack of make-up for dark skinned models at fashion shows in the major capitals. “I commend her and I’m very proud that she spoke up about it, because a lot of people are afraid,” said Nyamuoch diplomatically.

Courtesy of Nyamuoch Girwath

The 5 foot-11 inch model is headed to East Africa in anticipation of South Sudan’s independence day celebrations – a country she’s heard so much about but never known – after a two month stay in Cape Town. 25 year-old Nyamuoch is a hit in South Africa with spreads in Glamour, Elle, Cosmopolitan and Marie Claire as well as co-starring in the African luxury brand Mille Colline’s latest campaign. As glamorous as her modeling career looks, her life wasn’t always so glitzy.

The Girwath family left Gambela, Ethiopia in 1994 as South Sudanese refugees in search of a better future in the U.S. The midwest proved a more favorable place for the family after hearing there was a sizable South Sudanese community in Omaha, Nebraska as opposed to upstate New York where they were first placed. At five or six years old, Nyamuoch acted as a translator because her parents couldn’t speak English and she found herself updating them on documents regarding her father’s health.

Courtesy of Nyamuoch Girwath

To date, over two million South Sudanese people have been displaced as a result of the civil war, according t

South Sudanese Dinka-born supermodel Atong Arjok wearing her traditional Dinka corset

Supermodel Atong Arjok

Atong Arjok in her traditional ethnic Dinka corset

Atong Arjok, the Dinka icon of beauty

One of Donald Trump’s top fashion models was a refugee who escaped war and famine in her home country of Sudan as a child before rising to the top of New York’s fashion world as a recruit for the president’s prestigious modeling firm.

But if she had tried to come to the United States in 2017—while her former boss now sits in the White House—instead of in 2004, Ataui Deng may never have been allowed into this country.

At the end of his first week in office, Trump signed an executive order immediately suspending America’s refugee resettlement program for 120 days (while barring Syrian refugees indefinitely) and halting for 90 days all immigration from seven predominantly Muslim countries, including Sudan.

The constitutionality of that order is currently being challenged in court by a coalition of legal groups led by the American Civil Liberties Union, after a federal judge in New York issued a temporary nationwide stay late Saturday night barring deportation for people trapped in airports around the country (or those currently en route). Several other federal court rulings have since sided with the challengers to Trump’s presidential order.

While the president denied on Saturday that his current plan amounts to a “Muslim ban,” as a candidate he called for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.”

No matter what it’s called, if Trump’s order had been in effect back in 2004, it would have prevented his own modeling agency, Trump Model Management, from hiring a big new star.

Deng, now 25, came to the United States when she was 12. She was one of some 3,500 Sudanese refugees who fled the war-ravaged country for the United States in 2004. Her family was resettled in San Antonio, Texas, where her mother worked as a housekeeper and a custodian at a local hospital, and the young Ataui learned English and dreamed of being a model, according to a 2009 profile in t