Jamaican supermodel Nadine Willis: From Ghetto to Gucci

My introduction to Nadine Willis is not one I'm likely to forget in a hurry. I've just arrived in Kingston, Jamaica for Caribbean Fashion Week and I'm on my way to my hotel room when a lanky figure comes screaming across the courtyard and launches herself at my companion. "Who is this person?" I think, failing to recognize Nadine under her black baseball cap.

She's dressed casually in three-quarter-length black trousers and a tight camouflage vest top; a woman with real curves - a world away from the anorexic models I'm used to seeing back in London. Later, a photographer friend of Nadine's jokes that her nickname should be Nadine "KFC" Willis, so fond is she of fast food.

She chats away ten to the dozen like an excitable child. "Fashion people," I think; after a tortuously delayed flight, all I want is a hot shower and a lie down. When I see Nadine again, she is on the runway modelling. It is a complete transformation: I can hardly believe the change - it's almost as though she's become someone else. Nadine is undoubtedly the star of the show. Carrying an electric guitar, she stalks the catwalk like she owns it. The crowd love her and cheer excitedly. And the story of how she came to be here is truly remarkable.

Nadine Willis was born in Kingston, Jamaica, a no-thrills ghetto girl. "It was hard for me as a little girl growing up there," she says. "For most of the time, I didn't have a father. The family court took me away from him because he was so abusive. My mother had gone off to Canada and left me outside my father's gate. I was about three years old. Some strangers took me in, then my father took me from them. The first 13 years of my life were always back and forth, never settled. I had to start work at age 11."

"My mother came back to Jamaica when I was 15 but we never really hit it off. I do not relate to her. It's not that I haven't forgiven her, I have. But she always makes things worse for me."