Photo Credit: ANGELA WEISS/AFP/Getty Images
Agency: The Lions
Instagram: @slickwoods
Claim to Fame: She served as the flawless face behind Rihanna’s record breaking Fenty Beauty and this spring Woods was announced as the official face of Mercedes Benz.
The Instagram bios of models as sought after as Slick Woods are usually populated with links to questionable diet teas or blinged out athletic slides but atop images of her strutting confidently in chartreuse lingerie and violet lipstick is information on a non-profit organization that helps men and women putting their lives back together after being incarcerated.
The model, who has been previously incarcerated and struggled with substance abuse, knows about the power of a second chance.
When she was 19 years old her life was changed drastically after spending the day with an English model who believed she could become one of the biggest names in the business before she had so much as given the career a second thought.
Her quick rise to success is astounding and it makes her staunch refusal to disconnect from her humble beginnings that much more impressive.
Some would have hopped into a Mercedes and away from those still in the struggle but like ill-fitting garments and bad lace front wigs that’s not something that’s Woods’ style.
Instead she stands whole in front of some of the largest players in fashion. She doesn’t shy away from addressing the absurdities and and contradictions of the industry in the public eye unafraid that her stances will affect her bookings.
She’s quick to call out “champagne problems” and redirect questions about her bold personal style to topics like the power of innovative engineering to change the world and the struggles associated with post-traumatic stress disorder.
In a one-on one with Glamour she was frank about her feelings about cultural appropriation and tokenism saying that the industry tends to “take the hood, crunch it up, throw some glitter on that shit, and walk it down the runway.”
Woods credits the physical beauty that keeps her booked and busy to the superior genes of her mother (currently awaiting her own second chance in prison) but her intellectual prowess is one of a kind.
