What fashion image sums up the summer 2021 for you? For me, it’s Omahyra Mota—defiant, proud, secure in her skin—photographed by Renell Medrano for Louisa Ballou’s pre-fall lookbook. The colorful, leave-little-to-the-imagination clothes speak to a new school of strong and sexy dressing for women by women.“We’ve always loved Omahyra’s androgynous energy and individuality throughout her career,” said Ballou, who in casting Mota also tapped into the aughts mania of the moment.
Mota’s career kicked off with the new century; her first appearance in the Vogue Runway archive is circa spring 2001. She arrived on the scene seemingly fully formed. With her short, cropped hair, she brought a new energy and a new sense of self to the industry—qualities that fashion has only recently begun to value on the catwalk.
How Mota ended up on the runway at all is a story of resilience. Born in the Dominican Republic, she moved to the States with her mother, siblings, and grandmother when she was 10. “We left everything behind, my whole childhood, my friends, basically my whole little life, everything I knew,” says Mota, all in the hopes of building a better life in Queens, New York.
Mota remembers that when she was about 15, her mother picked up a disposable camera and took pictures of her in a bathing suit. Measurements were added to the back and with a “nothing to lose” attitude, says Mota today, the photos were sent “literally to every agency in New York City.” Just one recipient called back: George Speros, then at Boss Models. After that, Mota explains, “everything happened really fast. I feel like it was my time to come in. And it just went because everybody was just very into [my] look.” Maybe not everyone, but “that just gave me more gas,” says Mota. “So when I went to a casting, I walked harder. When I went to see somebody my flow was on point, the hair was sharp and hard, just like my personality and my look.”
Head over to Mota’s Instagram page and you’ll see that her look, which she describes now as “punk alternative,” has changed very little, except for additional tattoos and the occasional buzz cut. Tattoos and piercings, so common now, had shock value back in the day, a fact that Jean Paul Gaultier leveraged when he presented his Les Tatouages collection for spring 1994. Mota, with her back tat “Nicanor,” was an inked outlier in the 2000s. “Clients hiring me knew that they were going to get this edgy, strong girl that has tattoos and piercings.”
Yet Mota brings more than her looks to any job. “I feel like this attitude and this energy I’m bringing to the runway—to work in general—it comes from my mom, from my grandmother,” she says. “It’s just the whole island thing, the struggle; you know, all those things form you. I just feel like I bring all this Dominican, I want to say energy…. Like Queens, New York, Dominican Republic, you know what I mean? Like the roots, the food, the music.”
Then there’s the added spark of her androgynous look. “When I wear suits on the runway, when I’m doing a men’s show... I am not thinking that I look like a boy. [What] I am thinking the whole time is that I am just bringing the most in strength and expression; my eyes, the way I’m looking, the way I’m moving, it’s not more like a boy, it’s just strength, flavor, sauce, like swag.” From the beginning, Mota adds, “For me, my mind sounded like strong women.”
There is power in choice, and Mota, who now lives in Miami, has opted to take care of her daughters, ages 3 and 8, full-time. Following in the footsteps of her mother, a painter, and her grandmother, a designer, the model also makes time to serve as creative director for her friend’s clothingline Anger, and to paint. She’ll exhibit her artwork at Art Basel Miami.
As fashion catches up with her, Mota is newly relevant. Twenty years into her career, she hasn’t changed as much as the industry has in its evolving definitions of self expression, beauty, and inclusion. It’s about time.
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