Precious Lee is a beautiful, radiant beauty that you have to see up close. It’s been obvious, from her first editorials in store catalogs—where she posed like she was in a couture campaign—to her more recent presence on runways and magazine covers, that she’s a model the fashion industry wants to keep watching. The last few years have seen a dazzling rise for Lee, who belongs to the category of “curve models,” but who went from the typical domain of such mod-els—lingerie, swimsuits—to modeling the clothes of Versace, Fendi x Skims, and Moschino, proving again that high fashion can be sold to consumers with an array of body types. It’s a victory for a Southern Black woman who has continually resisted expectations of what she can and cannot do.
Lee was in Atlanta visiting family for the holidays, not long after we first made arrangements to meet. I’d been down South recently, too, visiting my Alabama hometown, about two and a half hours away from where Lee grew up. It was mostly sunny in both places, but now we’re sitting outside a New York restaurant with a heater hanging over us, a cold wind pushing against the table, and we’re freezing—well, I am.
She looks warm in a red crop top by Hanifa with extra-long sleeves. She also wears vintage denim under a Balenciaga leather jacket with Margiela Tabi heels. “I run hot,” Lee tells me, dropping her large quilted Telfar bag on the ledge beside us. Her black hair is straight and long, and her eyebrows have been bleached blonde in a recent photo shoot. Lee and I are glad to have discovered our common roots, despite the darkening skies. “I love being from the South,” she says. “There’s something so warming from every person that you meet.”
Lee was the son of two creative parents. Her mother, Anita (a teacher), and her father Rudy (a cosmetologist and entrepreneur who owned hair salons among other businesses) are both teachers. Both of them exuded glamour. Rudy wore Versace and “silk shirts unbuttoned with gold chains,” Lee says. People said he looked like a Black Elvis: “He had pretty much Elvis hair my whole life,” she adds. “He always had some big white car that he would pull up to the skating rink.”
Keith, Keith’s uncle, was a drag king and bought Dior for his infant Lee. She was encouraged to be creative. She performed in the living room. “I was like, ‘Dad, hit the lights.’ He would dim the lights and I had this whole little showcase. I would do spoken word, I would sing,” she says.
Her mom encouraged her to do well in school and let her choose elaborate outfits the night before. Their home was also distinctive. “We had pink carpet. My childhood bed was a California King round bed with a custom red velvet-tufted headboard. My older sister Charisma had a waterbed,” Lee says. “One of my favorite rooms in the house was this funky living room we had, and it was all white. It had this mirrored bar.”
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Charisma was killed in a car accident when Lee was a child. Lee was devastated and became the sole child at home. She had looked up to Charisma when she died in a car accident and would write and perform raps with her. “It was so much pain at that age from losing the brightest light,” Lee says. “I actually never talk about this in interviews, but it’s just really important to because I’m starting to realize and understand how transformative that age was for me in being able to tap into things that were creative as an outlet for healing for me.”
Her parents encouraged her to get involved in activities that would distract her from her grief. In grade school, she enrolled in competitive cheerleading, a sport that she says taught her “healthy competition.” At her first practice, the coach ran through everyone’s positions, and said that Lee would be a base, at the bottom of the pyramid, because of her height and size. But Lee was hurt and confused: Why wouldn’t she get a chance to show her skills first and potentially be a tumbler at the front of the pyramid?
So she stood up. “Something just came over me, and I just started doing every jump, and I did a roundoff into a split. And I was crying because I knew I was good,” Lee recalls. “[It was]My version of refusing being put in a box. I was like, ‘There’s no way.’” When she finished, the coach came over to hug her, and said Lee would be at the front.
Lee was also a Girl Scout, participated in state science contests, and was a part of the dance team. She was a member in high school of the debate and thespian clubs, as well as the student government association. “She was a very active child, very present in the moment,” Anita tells me. “And she really inherited flair, which is instinctive in our family.” She adds, laughing, “She likes the finer things in life, and it’s our fault.” The two went to the ballet and to art museums when Lee was a girl; these days, Lee enjoys treating her mother, like when she took her to Saint Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands for her birthday.
Lee went on to study mass media arts at Clark Atlanta University, one of the country’s historically Black colleges and universities. I grew up on the campus of another HBCU—my dad taught at Alabama State University—and ask her if the experience was as heady as I imagine. “You have Spelman and Morehouse, where I cross-matriculated when I took my business course at Morehouse,” Lee says. “One of the best decisions ever. I loved the energy of just being around these damn super- confident, smart, powerful Black men, and me being myself completely.”
The style at Clark Atlanta was exciting; there was a highly-sought-after fashion show at every homecoming. A promenade that ran across campus was treated by students as a runway. “You’re like, ‘Girl, you are in first-semester freshman year and you have on the new Chanel boots?’” Lee recalls.
She was voted best-dressed in middle school and she was noticed for how she looked in college. She walked in the homecoming show as an freshman. “It was nuts. You have all these super-fashionable kids who have all these crazy perspectives on fashion, and you get them in one space,” she says. The students producing the show gave every model a nickname, and Lee’s was Toccara, after the Black curve model who was a contestant on America’s Next Top Model.
Walking in the show, she says, gave her the “experience of feeling how magical it could be to represent so many people in that space, because even though it was a Black school, I was the only freshman curve model. I just remember feeling so inspired.”
Lee originally intended to attend law school. But, during her freshman year, a friend convinced her to attend an open call at an Atlanta-based modeling agency. (“Do you know much they get paid?” her friend told her.) Lee was able to see that her goal of helping people as lawyers could partly be realized by reflecting on fashion women like herself after the homecoming show.
She was signed by the agency and was soon cast in commercial shoots across the Southeast. “I always came on set with that energy to give a picture and make a moment that was way beyond what we were supposed to do. I’m moving my hair. That wasn’t wind, that was me,” she says. “I knew I wanted Versace then.”
Lee took the LSAT and signed with Ford Models New York during her second semester of her senior years. Lee then moved to New York the week after she graduated from college. “That was one of the most spiritual decisions that I feel like I made in my adult life—to really take that leap,” she says. “To say I’m a full-time model after spending thousands of dollars on college. This is a huge risk. A size 12 is a big risk. Not from nepotism, having dark skin. There were so many different things that were aligned for me to have ‘a struggle.’”
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She felt she had no choice but to give it a try, even if she was the only person who could see her wearing couture. And even if she was committing to working in an industry where Black female bodies are either ignored or extremely visible and harshly judged—a magnification of the way society treats Black women. “I leaned into understanding and knowing like, ‘I know my power. You may not know my power yet,’” Lee says. “‘I don’t have to force you to see. You’re going to see it.’”
It was difficult for her to start life in the city. She attended a casting meeting for a client with high-profile clients. Her agents assured her that the work would be lucrative if hired. After seeing her portfolio, casting representatives asked her about her ethnicity. Lee stated that she was Black. They told Lee that they thought she was mixed race because she was so pretty. Lee, however, was stunned and said that she was African American. The meeting quickly ended.
Lee is moved to tears when she thinks about that experience and how she refused to lie about her background in order to get the job. She had decided not to internalize the industry’s prejudices about Black beauty. “I have been real when it has not been to my immediate advantage,” she says.
Then she got! The job: In the fall of 2020, Lee walked in Versace’s spring 2021 show in Milan, to a mostly virtual audience. “To be on set with Donatella—I felt like I was gliding. I could feel Charisma,” she says. She shot the brand’s campaign two days later and walked in its next two shows, along with the brand’s collaboration with Fendi. She has also attended the Met Gala—wearing a glittering, fringed suitdress by Area—and has worked with acclaimed fashion photographer Steven Meisel.
“The first time I met Precious, I immediately felt a pull,” Donatella Versace says. “Her laughter, the way she moves, the self-confidence, the way she embodies sensuality in her own way. She is professional, kind, and easy to work alongside. What more could I possibly add? I just adore her.”
Jeremy Scott, the designer behind Moschino, tells me that Lee came up to him at an Oscar party “prior to her explosion onto the fashion world” to tell him that she was a fan and wanted to work with him one day. “I was so entranced by her beauty, all I could manage to say over and over again was, ‘You’re Soooooo pretty.’ I was also inspired by the fact that her confidence is infectious!” he says. Her strengths, he goes on, are her ability to create characters for the camera and runway, and to give the “best hugs ever.”
Lee’s refusal to compromise her sense of worth makes her success feel even better. Since she was a child, her parents encouraged Lee to take pride in herself. “Me being my size, me being my color—my mom painted our angels that were on the [Christmas] tree if she couldn’t find a Black one. She had a watercolor set with brown colors and would paint the angel. She would paint Barbies that she couldn’t find to be my color,” she says. Lee, who was recently guest-judged in an episode of Project RunwayShe made her acting debut in the Starz series. Run the World, tells me, “I’ve walked a runway with Naomi. As a size 14. Like, ‘What?’ I’m grateful it’s happening right now. I’m grateful it’s happening from my spirit.”
Adrienne Raquel
Hair by Evanie Frausto for Redken; Makeup by Raoúl Alejandre for Valentino Beauty; manicure by Mei Kawajiri for Dior Vernis.
This article appears April 2022 in ELLE.
Source: elle