"If I want to save the world, I need to do it in a different way": Malaika Holmén on the importance of representation

For most models, a chance encounter with a scout at an airport or a coffee shop may be the life-changing moment that launches their career. They dream of being plucked from obscurity and splashed on a cover or handed a major campaign. For Malaika Holmén, it was never if, but when.

Born in Gothenburg to a father who was adopted from Liberia and grew up in Tanzania and Sweden, and a Somali mother – also a model – Holmén doesn't even remember the first time she was asked to model. It has been a constant question, posed throughout her life. Her poreless skin, short bob hair, and towering height meant it was only a matter of time before she took those first steps on the runway. “People have always seen it in me, I've been told it a lot... Like all the time. But if you don't see it in yourself...?” she trails off.

Now, after a five-year hiatus from an industry that has never stopped calling, Holmén belongs to a new crop of Scandinavian models. Alongside the likes of Denmark’s Mona Tougaard, Norway’s Kaya Wilkins and Sweden’s Ifrah Qaasim, Holmén is redefining the Scandinavian supermodel. Holmén began modeling at 15, whilst still at school in Gothenburg, but quit the industry six years later at 21.

Related: Scouted at IKEA: The stories behind Scandinavia’s greatest models

After what she describes as a “traumatic experience,” Holmén decided to go back to school to continue her studies before working with an organisation that supported people within marginal communities. It would be another five years before she returned to modelling. Since then, her career has skyrocketed, culminating in her first Vogue cover shoot for this very magazine.

We meet on one of the first cold days of autumn in Stockholm. Holmén wears a fuzzy camel sweater and jeans, topped with a relaxed trench worn open – the epitome of sartorial ease. Colourful stacked beaded chokers from Tanzania wrap around her neck, a massive leather tote with all her wares flung over her shoulder. She tells me she has recently turned 30. At first glance, she could pass for a teenager, but during a long chat over fika, it becomes clear she has a worldly countenance.

Although the conversation touched on some of the most serious social issues of our day, Holmén is quick to laugh, her demeanor puts me at ease. Growing up in Gothenburg, she says, was fun. Her parents met in Sweden’s second largest city, and had her when they were quite young. They separated when she was just six years old but Holmén remembers it as “a playful upbringing, there was a lot of music and dance.” She speaks frequently and fondly of her father – his significance in her life is strongly felt.

It was also around this age, when she entered school, that she first experienced what it meant to not look “traditionally Scandinavian.” After she told her dad of her first racist encounter, he immediately took her and her little brother out of the school they were in, and enrolled them into a Montessori-type school. The new school allowed her to create her own textbooks, which was great for her dyslexia and also created a safe environment for her to grow.

“It had more of a family atmosphere and it helped shape me to be a lot more free thinking,” she says. However, when it was time for her to enrol in high school, that comfortable bubble burst. “Suddenly there was ‘girl drama’ and it was like a high school show,” she laughs. Joining the real world after being cocooned for so long was a bit of a shock to the system, but she soon found her people.

“I was in a dance group and it was really good. I had my community,” she says. “I was a part of hip hop culture in Gothenburg and I also was super lucky because the school I went to – 'Twisted Feet Academy' – brought people over from New York, so I got to meet people from Soul Train. I got to meet Suga Pop, who worked with Janet Jackson. I got to meet legendary people,” she says.

Her parents both moved away from Gothenburg when she was 17 and so she lived alone. “It was hard but also good. I had to learn how to be a grown up,” she says. At 21, after she decided to step away from modelling, Holmén moved to Karlshamn in the south of Sweden to be closer to her mother and brother, and to finish her last year of school. There, she got a job working with underprivileged communities. “That made it slower to get my high school grades but it was so worth it,” she says. “My job was to integrate young people and refugees.”

Even when the money for projects ran out, she continued working voluntarily, supporting many of the projects herself. She talks about visiting communities, bringing them music and dance, and helping them enter into society. “It was so powerful, helping them and making music with them – people cried with happiness. I don't have the words for it. It gives you that feeling that nothing can match.”

Related: Helena Christensen on philanthropy, mortality, and why we should all believe in mermaids

The organisation she was working with asked her to take up a role in Stockholm and soon she was at a desk job in the head office, helping out different causes. At the same time, she was thinking more about her relationship with Tanzania. Her father had taken her to the East African country many times over the years but she was keen to get more involved with this part of her heritage.

“I'm fascinated about the culture and also something in me wants to develop the school system and help out there in different ways,” she says. “When I was young, I wanted to be a superhero. But I realised if I want to save the world, I need to do it in a different way. And then that has evolved every year by learning different parts of how society works and how the school system works. It's so complex. With every country it’s different.”

We touch on the challenges of attempting to try to help people in developing countries – especially when coming from an affluent European nation. “I felt I needed to save this thing or I needed to help out. And then I realised that perspective isn’t necessarily helpful because a lot of projects in Africa and many other places, they go there and they work, and when they leave, the project dies. And so I realised the best thing to do is to give people tools to help themselves.”

Holmén always knew that she wanted to connect with her heritage. It was part of her life plan – something she says was mapped out from a young age. At the start of every year she plans out a life road map and then the following year she sees how much of it she achieved. Much of this comes from the support she received from her parents when she was young.

“I'm born in a family where we have Christians and Muslims. I got told as a six year old that you can be whatever you want but not to say you're something without knowing what it is like,” she says. “That made me understand that to be able to be a part of something I have to learn about myself. I have to ask questions. I have to say. I'm not just going to do something, you know? And that made me question a lot.”

The topic of racism comes up and she says that yes, she has experienced it. She tells of being thrown to the ground by security guards whilst with her dancing group in Gothenburg, adding that it's something that she has dealt with a lot in life. However, she is currently learning to deal with a different issue. “I've now learned the word it's to exotify someone. So this is what I think I receive,” she says.

“That's a thing in itself. What I understand is that my cousins in Gothenburg are more dark-skinned – they've got the racism while I got the exotifying.” Her mixed heritage and parents’ genes have meant that she is often told by strangers how beautiful she is, which also becomes very uncomfortable. “We live in a world where the structure is as it is. It's just about understanding what time we were born in, and trying to shift yourself. Like shake your privilege if you want,” she says.

Related: The Wonders of Greta Thunberg: Read our interview with the voice of a generation

“Some people don't want that though and that's also something that's hard to accept in my heart. But the shift that happened for me from crying a lot, from feeling like I'm bullied, from feeling outside – was that I understood that this is a structure. I don't believe in that structure. I don't live in that structure. I'm not anything less. I’m on fire.”

On fire is certainly an apt phrase for Holmén. In 2016 she decided to walk for Stockholm Fashion Week to support a friend and suddenly the modelling spark was reignited. “My mum said you should speak to an agency and I was signed on the spot,” she says. Holmén was at film school for a year before dropping out to focus on modeling full-time in 2018.

Coming back to modelling after a five-year hiatus was like coming into another world. Me Too, Black Lives Matter - so many social movements had occurred in those intervening years. “I feel like the industry was more interested in who I was,” she says. Campaigns for Bottega Veneta, Calvin Klein, Fendi, Miu Miu and editorials in British and Italian Vogues followed and she moved to London’s trendy Hoxton district before more recently relocating to the British south coast hipster hangout of Brighton.

The day we spoke she had just obtained her US visa. The next place on her radar is New York, a city she doesn't know well but one that is ripe for the next opportunity. Wherever that may be, one thing is for sure: there are many more covers to come... Or so her road map says.