Waris Dirie

WARIS DIRIE was born in Somalia. Her name means 'desert flower'. Her mother was quite well-off but her father was from a poor family. After they married, her parents were on the move all the time with their goats and camels. Life was hard but Waris had a happy childhood. She used to race camels with her brothers and sisters.

When she was twelve, her father arranged for her to marry an old man in exchange for five camels.The man was sixty. It was such a horrible idea that she decided to run away to the capital, Mongadishu. There, she moved from one relative to another. Finally, a kind aunt get her a job as a maid in the Somalian Embassy in London. When the ambassador returned to Somalia, she lost her job. Suddenly, she was in real trouble. Waris was on her own and out of work in a foreign country. She lived by herself, had no money and her English was so bad that it was difficult for her to find work. Eventually, she got a job as a cleaner in McDonald's.

One day, everything changed. By chance, a fashion photographer came in for a burger and saw Waris cleaning the floor. She looked like a perfect model so he immediately offered her work. Within months, she had started a new career. She became a top fashion model, advertising Revlon beauty products, and her face was on the covers of hundred of magazines around the world. She was even in James Bond film, The Living Daylights, in 1987.

Waris had such a warm and attractive face that her modelling career was a huge success. Howeverm in 1997 she decided to give up her life as a model. She wrote her autobiography, Desert Flower, about her exciting and exceptional life. "It's very sad," she says. "I had to make the choice to leave my country. What was it like in Africa? Africa was different," she continues. "I was young. I had nothing to worry about. I had my family, I had my animals, I had my simple life."

Waris now lives in New York. She works for the United Nations and campaigns for women's rights all over the world. There is never a dull moment. "I'm trying to sit down for a moment and there's no time for that," she laughs. "In Somalia, we don't care what time it is!"

Roaring Twenties

There was probably no other period in the history of female fashion as dramatic as the first three decades of the 20th century. Up to World War I, women used to wear dresses like in the picture beside. Then, in the 1920s, came the flapper look, which was similar to many modern fashion designs. We asked Stephanie Reno and Barbara Heller to tell us about those days.

Stephanie Reno (96): "When I was a child, women used to wear those tight corsets to give themselves a smaller waist. And then, one day, my older sister just threw away all her corsets. She was following the fashion of the day and she started wearing simple, loose dresses. She would even wear shorts! She would put on make-up, go to parties, smoke, and drink. My mother thought she had gone completely wild!"

Barbara Heller (95): "Clothes used to be terrible in the old days-that is before twenties. My mother didn't use to wear trousers at all. My granny would always put on this horrible huge hat, decorated with flowers and feathers. She never went out without it. And then, all of a sudden, everything changed. I remember my sisters were very sporty girls - they went swimming and cycling and they would wear trousers all the time. They needed comfortable clothes."

The person who had the greatest influence on the style of the 1920s was Coco Chanel, the most famous fashion designer of the 20th century. She cut her hair short and wore trousers, so they became trendy in women's fashion. Back in the 1920s, she introduced the cardigan, the little black dress, Chanel No. 5 perfume and many fashion items that are still popular today.