After being nominated more than once, Anok Yai is officially Britain’s Model of the Year.
On Monday, Dec. 1, the 27-year-old accepted the Fashion Model of the Year award during the 2025 Fashion Awards at London’s Royal Albert Hall in a stunning white satin strapless gown.
“Mama, I think we made it,” she wrote on Instagram, sharing a carousel from the evening alongside photos from her childhood, including a sweet shot with her mother.
She later reposted that image in her Stories, soundtracked to Radiohead’s “All I Need.”
For the ceremony, Yai stepped onto the red carpet in a custom white and ivory satin corset gown by Dilara Findikoglu, complete with a mermaid silhouette, a draped skirt, and a ruffled train. She paired the look with drop earrings and a sharp, blunt brown bob with bangs.
The ceremony, hosted by the British Fashion Council in partnership with Pandora, honors a model whose influence has shaped the industry over the past year. In a statement shared through the Council, per People magazine, Yai reflected on the significance of the recognition.
“Being named Model of the Year is such an honor,” she said, per People. “My journey—from Egypt to South Sudan to the U.S.—is one of resilience and community. This recognition is for everyone who’s ever seen their story in mine. Thank you for celebrating us.”
This year’s win follows back-to-back nominations for the model who lost out in 2024 to Alex Consani, the award’s first transgender winner, and in 2023 to Paloma Elsesser, the award’s first-ever plus-size winner. When she lost out to Consani in 2024, she was briefly mired in controversy for taking to her X account to declare she didn’t want the award anymore.
“Alex, I love you and I’m so proud of you,” she wrote on X at the time, adding, “British Fashion Council, thank you but I don’t want it anymore.”
In a second post, she followed up by writing, “If you have seen the effort that I’ve seen Alex put in; you would understand how proud I am of her. But Alex can be proud and I can be exhausted at the same time. It doesn’t take away how much love we have for each other.”
Her victory this year caps off a meteoric rise marked by record-breaking runways, high-fashion campaigns, and her status as one of the most influential faces of the new era of fashion. From her viral breakout at Howard University’s 2017 Homecoming to becoming the first Black model to open a Prada show in over 20 years to openly calling out racism in the industry, Yai has become one of the industry’s defining forces.
