Precious Lee: ‘A Great Model Can Do It All’
It takes me two weeks to pin down Precious Lee for this interview. She’s travelling, she’s shooting, she’s on set with ELLE. To put it plainly, she is ‘booked and busy’. As I align diaries with her people, nerves set in and I worry that, when we finally sit down, I might encounter a diva with somewhere else to be who rushes through answers. What I find is the opposite. Chatting with Lee feels like talking with an old friend. She’s the wise one, with encouraging words and advice to remember.
Lee breaks the ice by bringing up astrology. She’s a Virgo (‘like Beyoncé’), and wears all the attributes assigned to the zodiac’s most logical, practical and high-achieving sign on her sleeve.
She’s a life-long perfectionist, a very Virgo trait, and one she’s had since her childhood in Atlanta, where she balanced competitive cheerleading, Girl Scouts and dance team with debate club. She dreamt of becoming a lawyer.
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Today, that capacity to juggle, while maintaining an attention to detail, defines Lee’s professional life. Whether she’s on set for her ELLE cover shoot, modelling in campaigns for Miu Miu, Calvin Klein and Fenty, or walking runways for the likes of Fendi and Versace, she demands the best from herself. ‘I want to get an amazing, one-of-a-kind, never-before-seen image,’ she shares, dialling in from her adopted city of New York. ‘I want to make it hard for the photographer to select, because I want them all to be good.’
It frustrates Lee that people assume modelling is just standing there in front of the camera. ‘Sometimes people think because you’re beautiful the photo is going to be beautiful, but that literally could not be more different from the truth,’ she says.
One of the striking things about Lee’s career is that she’s been able to move through the industry’s binary categories with ease and success; from the worlds of commercial ad campaigns to high-fashion runways, and back again. A new season of shows looms as we talk. At the autumn/winter 2024 presentations, there was a clear regression of diversity on the catwalk; ‘the return of size zero’ was a dominant talking point on the front row and beyond.
Lee’s presence at shows including Conner Ives, Ahluwalia and 16Arlington was a rare moment of size diversity, an all-too-rare representation of the vast majority of women. But she refuses to be boxed in by any single narrative, especially the ones about her body, or reduced to a type. ‘From the start of my career, I thought it was all kind of silly [that models were divided into categories], because I think a great model is a model that can do it all,’ she says.
A decade into her career, Precious has joined the illustrious pantheon of Supers who are known for their character, opinions and values, rather than just their look or ability to wear clothes – she’s a model in the spirit of Cindy Crawford, Christy Turlington and Linda Evangelista; women who paved the way for covergirls to become bona fide celebrities in their own right.
Within the industry, there’s been a slowly building feeling of change, where a new generation of supermodels who come without pre-assigned celebrity are achieving a hard-earned fame. Precious Lee, Paloma Elsesser, Vittoria Ceretti, Selena Forrest, Adut Akech, Mona Tougaard – women who are on the road to becoming mononyms, developing a sense of self on the world stage and revealing personas beyond the day job that require them to act in character.
‘All my life, every model that I have loved is able to be a trans- former,’ she says. ‘If you can’t transform on different sets or in different clothes or different locations behind different lenses, I think that it just means you have more work to do,’ she adds.
One model who has inspired her is Naomi Campbell. A serendipitous meeting in a lift in 2018 turned Lee’s one-time idol into a long-term mentor. ‘The reason why I’ve always admired Naomi, and why she was so powerful for me to witness when I was a little girl, was because she held this space with so much confidence,’ Lee says. ‘It’s what drew me to her. Now, I am just really grateful that we met. She’s always encouraging and checks in on me. There’s something so cool about having someone that you admire support you.’
Precious exudes a similar self-possession to that which she admires in Naomi. Some might call it a thick skin; the modelling industry remains a challenging place for women – and especially women of colour.
Yet Lee says her conviction has always been a part of her. It was instilled by her mother Anita, a teacher with an unwavering commitment to her daughter’s successes. A strong work ethic runs through her family; Precious’s father Rudy is an entrepreneur who owns a series of hair salons. She lost her older sister Charisma when she was still in primary school. ‘It’s a testament to my ancestors and my family. I had a laser vision. We should all have that and protect it. You should have that too,’ she tells me.
Lee says the longer she stays in the industry, the harder she must work to hold on to her sense of self-belief. ‘The confidence that I came into this industry with was indestructible,’ she says of her transition from Atlanta to New York immediately after graduation, adding, ‘I knew I was a model that the industry had never seen before.’ But with time, ‘I’ve realised it is really difficult to maintain that level of mental power. You can physically push yourself to do it, but you have to grow yourself emotionally and spiritually, as you also grow your career.’
Lee’s modelling aspirations began as a university student at the historically Black university Clark Atlanta, where she planned to study law. Her freshman year, she attended a local agency’s open call, a decision that set her on her way. A string of jobs eventually led her to New York, where she signed with Ford Models, but is now with IMG. ‘I think about it now and I crack up, remembering what I would wear to those first castings. I would be pumping around New York, going to castings with a red lip and a shirt tied up. That was just “no” – that’s not necessarily the protocol.’
Now, she says she’s a woman in transition, exploring who she wants to be. ‘I want to shift my personal and professional style this season,’ Lee says. She’s keen to move beyond the ‘super-glam’ personality she embodies on red carpets. ‘I guess perhaps my model style is snatched-corset-siren girl. But deep down, I’m the T-shirt girl. I want to show more of my versatility. This is my personal style. For example, yesterday, I wore a Bottega Veneta tennis dress that I got in Tokyo with Margiela shoes. My hair was in a bun. I just think it’s about sharing that chill side more,’ she says.
She’d like to see the fashion industry recover its joy, in a climate that has been challenging politically, economically and environmentally. ‘Don’t get me wrong, I love those serious runway moments that make you cry. But we have an opportunity right now to deliver a sense of joy. I’m excited to see if we can counter this moment in history and push things to a more positive place.’
Precious Lee is represented by IMG Models.
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