Aweng & Alexus Ade-Chuol Cover ELLE UK January 2021 by Meinke Klein

Aweng & Alexus Ade-Chuol Cover ELLE UK January 2021 by Meinke Klein

Aweng and Alexus Ade-Chuol cover the January 2021 issue of British ELLE, speaking about their December 2019 marriage at City Hall in Manhattan. Aurelia Donaldson styles the duo in ‘A Modern Fairytale’, lensed by Meinke Klein./ Makeup by Bea Sweet

Aweng’s father was a child soldier in the First Sudanese Civil War, lasting from 1955-1972, between north and south Sudan. It began a year before Sudan was declared independent from Great Britain. The Second Sudanese Civil War was an intense 22-year conflict between the central government in Khartoum and the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA). It ran from 1983-2005.

Aweng’s family fled the Second Sudanese Civil War when her mother was pregnant with her. Like Adut Akech and Halima Aden, Ade-Chuol was born in Kakuma, northwestern Kenya’s UN-run refugee camp, as the eldest of 12 children.

Aweng has never been able to visit war-torn South Sudan. At the age of seven, she moved with her family from Kenya to Australia, leaving her father behind fighting on South Sudan’s war-torn battlefields. Aweng’s father passed in 2012, due to complications from a war wound.

Until she was 19 and discovered working at a McDonald’s in Sydney, Aweng stayed in Sydney with her mother and siblings. Always filled with big ambitions and goals for her future, the rising talent found herself in Paris, booked as a worldwide exclusive for Vetements.