Fashion forward to freshman year: Former model pursues medicine at Hillsdale

Home Features Fashion forward to freshman year: Former model pursues medicine at Hillsdale
Fashion forward to freshman year: Former model pursues medicine at Hillsdale
Freshman Ritah Ogayo worked as a professional model in Kenya before coming to the United States. Ritah Ogaya | Courtesy
Freshman Ritah Ogayo worked as a professional model in Kenya before coming to the United States. Ritah Ogaya | Courtesy

Hillsdale freshman Ritah Ogayo worked as a professional model in Kenya before coming to the U.S., when her passion for fashion took a back seat to Kenya’s dire need for good hospitals and skilled doctors.

“I’ve always been a leader,” she said. “I saw modeling as an opportunity to make people know me better. Modeling really connects you with people, so when you present your [service] projects, people will see it as a serious thing if you’re well-known in the country.”

“Plus,” she said, “I had the height and the body and the smile and the walk, so why not?”

Ogayo started modeling her freshman year of high school after a friend convinced her to enter a high school pageant. Her friend coached her leading up to the competition and prepared her for the modeling world.

Ogayo then went to training for professional modeling where she learned poses, etiquette, and “the walk.”

Ogayo began her professional modeling career  in 2013 after finishing high school. She started with pageants, participating in some major shows in Kenya, but she said that high-fashion modeling is her favorite form.

“You sell yourself through pageants,” she said. “Pageants really connect you with big people in the fashion industry. When you compete, a lot of designers come to watch … Some of them are always looking for models. It connected me with a lot of people.”

Pageants are competitions like Miss USA, Ogayo said. High-fashion modeling, however, showcases a particular designer’s clothing, jewelry, hair, or makeup, rather than the model herself.

“In pageants, you have to smile a lot, because it’s your face you’re marketing,” she said. “But in high fashion, you’re marketing clothes or a design, so we never smile. We have the fierce look, because the clothes need to look better than you … I did pageants for a while, but I switched to high-fashion modeling because it’s more fun,” she said.

“My favorite thing about modeling was walking with high-fashion designers,” Ogayo said. “I’m an up-and -coming designer, so it felt really good talking to them, knowing how they started their journey.”

Ogayo uses her modeling career to build others up, despite the industry’s fierce reputation, her friend sophomore Katarina Bradford said.

“When I think of modeling as a career, I think of a really rough, cutting-edge career,” Bradford said. “But for her, it’s been her favorite thing about her life, because she has a passion for beauty and creating beauty through clothes and making people feel beautiful.”

Ogayo said she hopes to design clothing someday, and she currently designs and makes some of her own clothes.

“Right now most of my clothes are my own designs,” she said “But I’m not doing it professionally, not yet. You need the capital, you need to really get out there and know people, and you need to keep up with the trending fashions. You need to attend almost all the fashion events and see what people are doing and what you can do differently.”

“The hardest part is tailoring” she said. “It’s easy to come up with a design, but it’s hard to tailor it and have it fit right … it’s usually too big.”

Although Ogayo said she loved designing clothes and modeling, being able to impact her community was the best part.

“We reached out to kids who are suffering from cancer,” Ogayo said. “Generally, I’d say giving back to the society has been my favorite part. Through modeling I got to take part in a lot of social development programs in the society … I like helping humanity, that’s why I decided to become a doctor.”

Ogayo is majoring in biochemistry, and said she plans to attend medical school so she can open a hospital in Kenya. But her medical dreams have forced her modeling career to take a back seat to her studies.

Ogayo’s work ethic and dedication to her studies are inspiring,  her friend sophomore Emily Ostroski said. Although several of Ogayo’s friends said she misses her modeling career, they said the chance to make a difference through medicine was worth the sacrifice.

“She definitely loves modeling and she misses it a lot,” Bradford said. “But being here and getting a world-class education at Hillsdale, and preparing to go home and make an impact in the medical field — that’s something that makes her so excited and satisfied, I think.”