Model Behaviour: Shanina Shaik on baby Zai and her new beauty venture
With a new partner, a new baby and a new beauty venture in the pipeline, Australian model Shanina Shaik is gearing up for her next career pivot: Entrepreneur.
Words by PATTY HUNTINGTON; Photographed by BEC PARSONS; Styled by VANESSA COYLE
SHANINA SHAIK found love during lockdown. The brakes were slammed on dating for most people in the early stages of the pandemic, but Shaik, one of Australia’s most successful modelling exports, managed to meet her new partner, the Nigerian American record producer Matthew Adesuyan, in London in August 2020, at a time when the United Kingdom was about to crack down further on social gatherings. Having never previously met, the two Angelenos happened to be stuck in town at the same time — Shaik, grappling with a United States visa snafu and Adesuyan on business. After a mutual friend introduced them, love quickly blossomed. “It was an arranged relationship,” she quips.
On September 16, 2022, the pair welcomed their first child together: a boy, Zai. The name means prosperous and fortunate in Arabic, paying tribute to Shaik’s mixed-race ancestry (she is Lithuanian on her mother, Kim’s side and Pakistani Saudi on her father, Hanif’s).
“[Zai] is so very sweet, he smiles a lot,” says Shaik, adding that she had a dream pregnancy and labour: her contractions started at midday in her doctor’s office, she delivered at 11.50pm at the LA celebrity fave, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. “He’s very advanced as well, and very alert,” she says. “I think he’s already trying to say ‘Mum’, which, actually, we were just shocked about. He seems to do it when he cries — it’s quite funny. But he’s a beautiful baby boy. He looks like his dad but seems to be getting my eyes.”
Right: Shanina Shaik wears Loewe jacket, $11,250; MM6 Maison Margiela pants, $818; Burberry shoes, price on application; Chaumet earrings, from left: white gold with brilliant-cut diamonds, $24,740, and transformable white-gold with brilliant-cut diamonds, $41,350 (all worn throughout), and rings, on left hand, from left: white-gold with half pavé diamond, $5685, and white-gold with brilliant-cut diamonds, $53,320, and on right hand, from left: white-gold with three cushion-cut diamonds, and square- rose- and brilliant-cut diamonds, $341,640 (worn throughout), and platinum with a cushion-cut diamond and diamonds, $128,625. Zai wears Chaumet white-gold bracelet with half pavé diamonds, $18,070.
Those striking, cat-like green eyes have taken Shaik to the top of the modelling business. And at 32, an age when most models have long since hung up their stilettos, she remains a semi-regular on the international runway circuit and continues to bag international advertising campaigns and magazine covers.
Not even pregnancy put a dent in her work schedule. She worked almost non-stop at the beginning of last year, and at the end of her second trimester, she made the cover of a major international fashion magazine and also closed the amfAR Gala runway show at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival in a cream bridal look with a cut-out detail that exposed her belly.
Other 2022 gigs included being a campaign face for Bumpsuit, the maternity and shapewear line designed by her friend Nicole Trunfio, another Aussie expat model, who lives on a 20-hectare ranch in Austin, Texas, with husband Gary Clarke Jr. and their three children. Shaik shared maternity tips in an accompanying interview on the brand’s website, later explaining to Harper’s BAZAAR that she would like to see more available information about pregnancy. Her other model mates feel the same way, including her best friend, Jasmine Tookes, a former Victoria’s Secret Angel who launched the activewear line JOJA last year with fellow Victoria’s Secret alumna Josephine Skriver. “[Tookes] is having a baby, and we were talking about how there’s a lot of misinformation about pregnancy still,” Shaik says. “All those secretive things you kind of have to ask around about. I did a lot of research and also wanted to be comfortable with my own style of parenting and what works for me.”
There’s a lot of MISINFORMATION about pregnancy still. All those SECRETIVE THINGS you kind of have to ask around about. I did a lot of research and also wanted to be COMFORTABLE with my own style of PARENTING and what works for me.
Shaik is about to follow the lead of her model posse by launching her own business: a skincare project. She reveals to BAZAAR that it’s in development with a Korean laboratory and due for launch in the US some time in 2023. Direct to consumers initially via a website, the line will kick off with five items. “I wanted to work with Korean skincare labs because they are so advanced,” she explains. “I want to give something to my customers, knowing that they’re getting the right skincare advice and some advanced technology. That’s something I’m really excited about.”
Shaik’s business plans will see her join the legion of models who have launched a beauty line. Considering they are often the faces of the world’s biggest beauty brands, it’s no surprise so many high-profile models — such as Iman Abdulmajid, Cindy Crawford, Miranda Kerr and Hailey Bieber, to name a few — would test the power of their personal brands in the market.
Shaik might not have graduated to official Victoria’s Secret Angel status, but being closely aligned with America’s biggest lingerie retailer from 2011-2018 and walking in five of its blockbuster fashion shows propelled her into the spotlight. She later booked runway work with Chanel, Tom Ford, Oscar de la Renta and Jason Wu, among many others, as well as international advertising campaigns (including a beauty contract with Avon). She also segued into acting, with small roles in 2017’s The Mummy, and the 2019 satire Greed.
Victoria’s Secret has dramatically changed tack since 2018, following a fall in sales and, notably, controversial comments from former chief marketing officer Ed Razak that year about curve and transgender models not being welcome on the brand’s runway, leading to criticism the company was out-dated. Nevertheless, a Victoria’s Secret contract remains one of the modelling industry’s most lucrative gigs, and it opened doors for Shaik that she says were previously shut in her face — in New York, but also in Australia.
“There is a hurt behind [the fact] that I had to go elsewhere to be kind of recognised and feel safe and feel that support from Australia. I really had to kick down doors to show myself to the world,” she says. At 5’9”, she adds, “I was told I wasn’t going to be a high-fashion model and do runway; I was too short. Going to castings, [I’d be] walking in heels all day. I couldn’t walk in with my sneakers because they’d see how short I was. I’ve heard it all: too short, too exotic, too sexy, too big.”
Shaik has been turning heads for most of life. She joined a children’s talent agency at eight, after scouts repeatedly approached her parents. “I was shooting catalogue work for Myer, Target, Kmart and commercials,” says Shaik, who grew up in the Melbourne suburb of Hoppers Crossing with three younger brothers. “I loved it because you got dressed up, they did my makeup and I was on set. At nights, I would check my piggy bank. It would help with my schoolbooks and my uniform.”
Modelling momentarily went on the back burner when she entered an accelerator program for gifted students at Werribee Secondary College. But plans to pursue psychology studies were ultimately shelved in Year 11 when she left school to move to New York. Having resumed modelling at 14, in 2008, she was crowned runner-up in the first and only iteration of the Seven Network’s Make Me A Supermodel reality series, landing a contract with New York Model Management.
Shaik saw it as her ticket out of Australia. “Modelling wasn’t going to become anything above catalogues for me, unfortunately, because of my look at the time,” she reflects of a moment — the late aughts — when the Australian media landscape was still dominated by a blondeocracy of sorts, with negligible racial diversity in casting. More than one model accused the industry of racism, including Ajak Deng, the first South Sudanese Australian model to break through into an international career back in 2010.
“Australia saw Abbey Lee [Kershaw] and Miranda Kerr and Gemma [Ward] as an ‘Australian’ woman,” Shaik says. “But what makes Australia so beautiful as well [is that] it’s so diverse and multicultural. And we didn’t really tap into that. At that time, we weren’t heading in that direction — to be comfortable to choose women like myself to represent Australia in a fashion sense.”
New York was no cakewalk, however. There were lots of jobs, just not the kind she really wanted. “I was really pushed as a commercial model still, which is great because commercial models make more money in the fashion industry. But after a while, I did want more and I was being told every time I would go to castings that I was ‘too sexy’, which was really aggravating for me [as] a young girl who [was] still trying to figure out her sexuality and who she is. I wasn’t even trying to be sexy and it just really baffled me. So I changed my agency and had a really amazing agent who pushed for me. In [2011], I booked a Victoria’s Secret fashion show and it was life-changing.”
It’s important that BEAUTY comes in all SHAPES and SIZES and COLOURS, and that we showcase DIVERSITY. … [Zai] is even more diverse than me, and it’s just the world we live in
By the time Shaik made her first BAZAAR Australia cover, in April 2015 — cuddling a koala, no less, what could be more Australian? — the definition of Australian beauty had started to shift. The blondeocracy was, slowly, starting give way to greater diversity at the major modelling agencies and in fashion work.
An entire contingent of South Sudanese Australian models eventually broke through — one of them, Adut Akech Bior, now enjoying success as one of the world’s top models. There is also far greater diversity on the runways of fashion’s Big Four fashion weeks: New York, London, Paris and Milan. Not that long ago, as Shaik recalls, they, too, were whitewashed. “Throughout the whole fashion industry, a lot has had to change, and a lot has changed,” she says. “I have girlfriends [who] would skip Milan because they wouldn’t be booked because of their skin colour, which is absolutely atrocious. I was [in my early twenties] at the time. The terrible side was that I could go because I looked so mixed. Now that has all changed.
“It’s important that beauty comes in all shapes and sizes and colours, and that we showcase diversity,” she continues. “Even for myself now, having a child — he’s even more diverse than me, and it’s just the world that we live in. I think social media has had a huge impact on making that change and [giving people] a voice. I dealt with my own side of racism, trying to fight my way into being seen or wanting to be on a cover and having dreams to do certain shows. During fashion week, I remember being turned away at castings as well.”
So what’s Shaik’s five-year plan? “Definitely being successful in my own business and working with brands that I love, and maybe having another sibling for Zai.” Shaik describes the experience of giving birth as having imbued her with “a new respect for women and mothers in general” — particularly her own. “I understand becoming a mother and how protective you are over your child and just how in love you are and nothing in this world matters but your child,” she says. “So now I understand my mum saying she worries over us, because [in] everything I do, I just worry about Zai. I just want to teach him to be kind and caring and respectful, and to work hard and dream big, and then just guide him into what he wants to be as well — but protecting him.”
This story appears in the February 2023 issue of Harper’s BAZAAR Australia/New Zealand, available for delivery here.
Hair by Rory Rice at M.A.P,; makeup by Anne Timper at After Winter Agency; manicure by Jocelyn Petroni. Set design by Emma Elizabeth Designs. Bec Parsons and Vanessa Coyle are at The Artist Group.
