Photoshoots > 2019 > Stella Magazine – February 2019

Plus-size role model Iskra Lawrence: ‘I will wear what I want to wear… and you won’t stop me’

From  Kidderminster to international icon status, Iskra Lawrence has over four million Instagram followers who love her body positive messages. Here she discusses everything from stripping off on the subway to coping with her growing fame.

You can tell a lot about an interviewee from what they do immediately before and after your chat. Iskra Lawrence first checks that I’ve tasted one of the doughnuts she bought for everyone (I have). Then as her day with team Stella comes to end, she is busy googling where the nearest Boots is so that she can stock up on make-up removal wipes. ‘They’re only £1.50 here but if I buy them in America, they’re $6.’

With 4.4 million Instagram followers (who adore her steady stream of body-confidence messages), contracts with several major fashion and beauty brands including Persona by Marina Rinaldi, and a schedule so packed that she has only spent three days at home since Christmas, Iskra Lawrence – who grew up in Kidderminster in a family that ‘bought Tesco’s own-brand beans over Heinz’ – seems like the ultimate modern model success story. But boy, has she grafted for it. Perhaps that’s why her feet seem to have stayed so firmly on the ground.

‘There are stories where a model gets scouted on the street and the next week she’s in a Burberry campaign. That might happen for you, but that doesn’t happen for most people and it’s not realistic,’ the 28-year-old tells me, sweeping her newly silver hair over her shoulder (the result of a project with L’Oréal). ‘I tell girls all the time, you just have to keep on going, it’s not going to be easy.’