![]() ![]() In the Meisel images, she’s red-headed, her curves poured into sequins and lingerie while she lounges on a high-gloss chaise. Last week, Maya was shooting the Dolce campaign, which she gives me a sneak peek of on her phone. We agree upon two tuna niçoise salads and two fries, and jokingly dither over a £2,000 bottle of wine with the waiter but Maya tells him, “Everything tastes the same after two sips,” so we opt for something a bracket above house white. A glam team awaits her upstairs for a post-lunch event, but I’ve half a mind to tell them to go home – our girl is good to go. Her beauty regime – glimpsed on her Instagram Stories and regurgitated on the Sidebar of Shame – is a blend of lymphatic drainages, bin bag saunas, Shane Cooper aqua facials and her own Mij Masks. Today, it’s a long-sleeved crop top and boot-cut denim ensemble in the dustiest of beiges. Her style is always characteristically body-confident: she’s as at home in a Prada vest and joggers as she is in wet-draped tangerine trompe-l’oeil mesh. I’m acutely aware how first impressions of women get reported in magazines: “She saunters in looking dazzling in jeans and not a scrap of make-up.” But Maya saunters in to lunch looking dazzling in jeans and not a scrap of make-up. She’s hot off a flight from Shanghai “for a hol because I’ve only ever seen China in films”. For someone who’s amassed a lot of column inches, Maya has only given a handful of interviews like this. And then the other people are like, ‘Who the f**k is this bitch and what does she even do?’”Ī week earlier we meet for lunch at The Twenty Two, a members’ club and hotel in Mayfair. “The people that do really like me, I feel like they see a bit of themselves in me. “Can you imagine? I wouldn’t last a day.” She thinks about it some more. She oozes ease: “My friends take the piss, saying, ‘She’s the people’s princess,’” she says, cracking up. It’s this palpable feeling of an exceptionally hot woman who you might just be friends with, who you might just have a chance with. “We’re really good people, and it’s a weird balance between still being a city but everyone’s entwined. Lads’ fave, girls’ girl, RuPaul’s Drag Race UK guest judge – can she surmise her allure? “I’ve never met a prick from Bristol,” she says, answering without quite answering. With as many as 100,000 applicants a year, Love Island has taken Jama to the cutting edge of superstardom. Chat, we both agree in the fug of smoke, is Maya’s superpower. She says people don’t usually recognise her “until I speak”, on account of her radio voice, but we’re repeatedly approached in the cordoned-off smoking area where she’s all politeness and chat. Like, where the f**k do you even park?”).Īt quarter to maybe-we-should-wrap-this-up, she hails us a cab to Soho and before we know it we’ve been frisked by security and are bobbing happily in a sea of plastic-cup-carrying gays. ![]() She’s game for no-holds-barred dinner chat (racism in Britain is quite the appetiser, but a second later she’ll be talking about learning to drive: “If you live in London, there’s not much point. She’s game to try her first ever Martini (she takes one sip, grimaces, and taps out). She’s game to meet by the Spice Girls staircase at London’s St Pancras Renaissance Hotel (“I was always Scary Spice, because she was the wildest”). ![]() Not every Vogue cover story starts on a podium at G-A-Y Late, Soho’s least underground gay bar, clutching £3 tequila sodas and dancing to euphoric pop girlies, but Maya Jama is nothing if not game. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |