It’s not often you see a dog on the catwalk.
But last night, a black Labrador named Vogue stole the show at South African Fashion Week, alongside his partner, blind model Cornelle Leach.
While Leach, 24, has never modelled before, she rose to the challenge, wearing a blue-and-white summer dress by Cape Town design house Helon Melon.
“I’ve always wanted to model,” she told The Sunday Times this week at a dress rehearsal for the collaboration between Fashion Week organisers and the South African Guide-Dogs Association for the Blind.
Not that a big-time modelling gig is her biggest achievement. Leach has a master’s degree in marketing and tourism, is a keen rock climber, has gone swimming with sharks and is a Paralympic swimmer who won the 2022 bronze medal for 100m breaststroke. She holds three African and eight South African swimming records.
While Leach is Afrikaans, she speaks English to Vogue — the language they were trained in when they were paired up in 2019.
People are afraid or uncomfortable with disability. But then everyone’s a dog lover, so when I started bringing Vogue to class people started talking to me
— Cornelle Leach
“My mom likes to joke that her first grandchild is English, but the next one will be Afrikaans,” Leach said.
She began losing her sight when she was nine. She was diagnosed with Stargardt disease, which causes rapid vision degeneration. Two years later she had to give up netball, despite teachers organising high-visibility balls and lumo vests for the players.
“I was OK, I just adapted. It was just really hard for my mom and dad,” she said, describing how her world grew increasingly dark and lonely. “I was in second year and my brother had to fetch me after every class and take me to the next one and then walk home with me.”
But when Vogue moved in, she began engaging differently with the world.
“People are afraid or uncomfortable with disability. But then everyone’s a dog lover, so when I started bringing Vogue to class people started talking to me.”
It was Tanya Schonwald, head of strategic partnerships at the guide dog association, who came up with the idea of Leach and Vogue making an appearance at Fashion Week to raise awareness of the association.
“People don’t realise the importance of what we do, or how expensive it is,” she said. It can cost half-a-million rand to breed, feed, train and look after a single guide dog until it retires.
“I’ve had the idea of approaching Fashion Week for a while, so I reached out to [CEO] Lucilla Booyzen to suggest perhaps collaborating next year,” Schonwald said.
“And I just loved the idea,” laughed Booyzen. "[I] said no ways, we’re not waiting, we’re doing it now, and Cornelle was such a sport.”
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