Beauty is being comfortable and confident in your own skin.
Iman
Looking good is a commitment to yourself and to others. Wigs, killer heels, Pilates, even fillers - whatever works for you, honey.
Life is too short not to have pasta, steak, and butter.
Eliminating the things you love is not wellness. Wellness feeds your soul and makes you feel good.
I suffer from low self-esteem. I had horrible self-esteem growing up. You really have to save yourself because the critic within you will eat you up. It's not the outside world - it's your interior life, that critic within you, that you have to silence.
On a Friday night in 1983, I was in a taxi in New York riding home from dinner with friends. A drunk driver ran a red light and hit the cab, and I was thrown toward the glass partition. I tried to duck, but my face hit the glass, and the impact fractured my cheekbone, my eye socket, my collarbone and several ribs.
I believe in glamour. I am in favor of a little vanity. I don't rely on just my genes.
I'll be truly happy when we're not counting the number of ethnically diverse models on a fashion runway or campaign, when having a representation of the entire human race is the norm and not an exception.
The day you settle for less is the day you will get less.
I tell all my younger friends, 'Don't be afraid of change. That is when you truly see what your destiny is.'
Intelligence is sexy. Don't play dumb, especially young girls. Don't play dumb. And let people see that you are intelligent.
The women I gravitate to are the ones who defy convention and reinvent themselves - hence, they reinvent the world around them.
I wasn't a major in political science for nothing, so I understood the politics of beauty and the politics of race when it comes to the fashion industry.
There are highlights when you become irreplaceable as a model, like when you become a muse to designers. They look at you differently; you're not a coat hanger for hire.
I was born in Somalia, which is in East Africa. My parents started with nothing: poor, poor, poor. They eloped, which was unheard of in my country, when my father was 17 and my mother was 14.
We never do Valentine's dinner, because everybody, they look. On Valentine's, imagine me and David going to a restaurant! Like, everybody's going to say, 'Did they talk? Did they hold hands?' Twenty years. We've been married twenty years!
That is something that my mother instilled in me at a very young age - to know my self-worth. And I have had times again and again in the fashion industry where all of that was tested and I rose to the occasion because I was told that I am worthy and I should be able to walk away from something that is not worthy of me.
We all want what every girl wants: to look fabulous while we're out there ruling the world.
After the bones mended, my left eye was smaller than my right, and my eyebrow never grew back. But you know what? Big deal. I think I became beautiful after the accident. I became kinder, more aware. I gained respect for other people.
I was studying political science; I was adamant that I was going to follow in my father's footsteps.
As I always said: I fell in with David Jones. I did not fall in love with David Bowie.
The people who are the most successful in life are not stopped by fear.
On my 50th birthday in 2005, my discount-wielding AARP card came in the mail. I hurled it in the trash, put on something fabulous, and had a decadent meal. Just the thought of putting it in my wallet felt like a concession.
It's really not a good idea to forecast or double guess the fates; you will always be fooled.
I had never seen 'Vogue.' I didn't read fashion magazines, I read 'Time' and 'Newsweek.'
One afternoon, on my way to the campus - I was majoring in political science at Nairobi University - a photographer by the name of Peter Beard stopped me in the street and asked me if I'd ever been photographed.
Nobody has ever said to me that I was pretty, 'til I met Peter Beard.
I have no intention of ever writing beauty tips on how to make an African-American nose look slimmer or Asian eyes look bigger. That's degrading. Asian eyes are what's beautiful about you and what makes you different.
If I feel frustrated in a situation, I take a deep breath and walk away.
There are some people who have helped to advance me and other girls, but the fashion industry is always behind popular culture. They think they understand the zeitgeist. They don't know anything about the zeitgeist.
People talk about the miracle of birth. No. There's the miracle of conception. I did IVF, but nothing happened. So I began to think of adoption, and then I got pregnant. It was definitely a miracle.
I was admittedly comfortable with Iman Cosmetics being identified as a beauty brand that filled the gap for black women because it was deeply personal for me.
The difference between rearing a child in your 20s and one in your 50s is one of patience.
My looks have changed. I have laugh lines - not wrinkles.
I'm always criticised by other Somalis and Muslims for what I'm doing as a model and married to a white man and all that.
When my daughter Zulekha was born, I was at the pinnacle of my working life as a model, and I pulled myself in two trying to cope with being both a mother and a career girl.
I don't look like a white woman. I look Somali.
I thought at 46 years old, I've been removed from the fashion industry for 10 years. I couldn't possibly write a model's book. That's for a 20-year-old. But I could say what I want to say without chastising the industry.
There is no age better than another. The commitment to give of yourself and the knowledge that the time is right are what's important.
I believe the universe has great plans for us. When you are young, you don't learn that.
I started the cosmetics in 1994 after I stopped modeling, out of my frustration as a woman of color not finding what I needed.
I am the face of a refugee. I was once a refugee. I was with my family in exile.
At the end of the day, my legacy will not be modelling but my cosmetics line.
I speak five languages besides mine. I went to school in Egypt because girls weren't allowed to go to school in Saudi Arabia. It's very restricting, especially for girls; we're not allowed to go anywhere.
There is a lot of noise out there. I don't want to follow the trend - I want to create the trend.
People get numbed when they see picture after picture, year in and year out, of people starving.
I did not want to get involved with a rock star. No way. It is not a sane thing to do.
Change makes you find your calling, your legacy, and God's divine plan for your life. Don't run from it.
My ritual is cooking. I find it therapeutic. It comes naturally to me. I can read a recipe and won't have to look at it again.
I have a 15-year-old daughter who thinks that I always had this self confidence that I have now at the age of 60. And I always tell her that what she is going through - the low self-esteem as a teenager - that is a right of passage.
