Zohre Esmaeli

Zohre Esmaeli designed her own fashion collection "Zoraya" which was first presented at a charity fashion show on 13 November 2015 in Berlin to help raise funds for her new project "Culture Coaches" which supports refugees.

Based on her own experience as refugee Esmaeli founded the project "Culture Coaches" to help the sustainable integration of refugees. The project wants to give newly arrived families from the start an insight into German cultur and the values of German society by developing a bicultural didactics and a tutor team. It is supported by the Bürgerstiftung Berlin, a charitable foundation under the patronage of Wolfgang Thierse, which was started 1999 by Berlin citizens. The costs of the project have been raised by crowd funding and through a refugee fundraising event on 13 November 2015 in Berlin which raised the indented target of 40.000 Euros.

In February 2014 Zohre Esmaeli published her book Meine neue Freiheit. Von Kabul über den Laufsteg zu mir selbst in which she describes her story, the situation in Kabul, the months-long flight from Afghanistan and her life as a refugee in Germany. Esmaeli works also as independent fashion adviser in Düsseldorf.

In 2014 Esmaeli was made ambassador of the German Federal Anti-Discrimination Agency.

During three weeks in July 2013 a 4x5 meter large picture of Esmaeli could be seen by S-Bahn travellers in Düsseldorf on an empty windowless house wall which was painted by airbrush artist Andi Ponto. It was a birthday present of her boyfriend who lived in a house opposite of the wall. By order of the house owner the painting had to be whited out by the artist.

Her brother, Abdul Gharfour Esmaeli, is a cruiserweight boxer who started his professional career at the Internationale Box-Gala in Kassel in November 2012.

In 2006, Belgian designer Gerald Watelet discovered Esmaeli and she ran the catwalk for his label at the Fashion Week in Paris. She currently appears in fashion shows and photo shoots in New York, Paris, Milan and Berlin.

When Zohre Esmaeli was 16 years old the then current Miss Hessen approached her during a shopping trip in a H&M store in Kassel and asked if she was a model and wanted to have photos taken. She agreed and two days later she went to a model agency and started to do secret shootings without telling her parents. Her first shooting took place in Frankfurt. This, however, soon came to an end when her family found out and forbade her to continue. About a year after she had left her family and moved to Stuttgart she resumed her modeling career. Her first big clients were the furniture manufacturer Bretz who made her the centre of a large advertising campaign from 2003 until 2007 and the German designer Manfred Bogner who featured her from 2007 in many adverts for his fashion line BONNIE which were published in magazines like Vogue. Soon she appeared in other fashion and lifestyle journals as Elle, Cosmopolitan, Madame, Zink, Lounge, InStyle and Marie Claire. On 30 April 2004 Esmaeli took for Afghanistan part in the Queen of the World beauty pageant in Munich.

Zohre Esmaeli attended a comprehensive school and after an internship she wanted to pursue the career of an airplane electronics engineer. Her school years were difficult for her as she and her brother were the only foreigners in the class at her first school and also after moving to Vellmar she was bullied at her school in Ahnatal. Although now staying in Germany, her father and older brothers insisted on her living according to the Afghan tradition and had chosen a husband for her to marry. In order to escape from the family pressures and live according to her own wishes Zohre Esmaeli left at age 17 her family in spring of 2003 and moved into a children's home. After 12 days she ran away and went into hiding in Zuffenhausen near Stuttgart living with the family of her then boyfriend. During her first year living there she did not have any contact with her family. Later Esmaeli established again a normal relationship with her father although she does not discuss her work at home. Esmaeli speaks four languages, Dari (her mother tongue), Persian, English, and German.

Zohre Esmaeli (born 1 July 1985 in Kabul) is a model, designer and author from Afghanistan. She lives in Berlin, Germany. She was said to be the only international top model from Afghanistan in 2014.