Entitled “The Collective,” the SS24 editorial is a celebration of some of the many women who serve as inspiration for the house. In this three-part series, we capture recording sessions and confessional conversations with brand muses Lily McMenamy, Nella Ngingo, and Adina Fohlin—all people of artistic sensibility, personifying the Aeyde ideals of ingenuity and modernity. Aiming to reframe the concept of the oft-referenced muse, we invite each woman to take control of their own narrative. This is Nella.
Whether because of her body of work behind and in front of the camera or her activism for her community, model and photographer Nella Ngingo has long been a person of note for Aeyde. Based in Amsterdam but on set in Berlin for our SS24 shoot, Nella is gracious with her time and forthcoming about her life’s story.
Traversing the usual interviewer-interviewee route, we start with foundational questions to set the tone–“What do you do?”–and we are eager to hear everything Nella has to say when she responds, “I find it such an odd question all the time. I guess I live. I breathe. I experience life to the fullest.”
“There are at least twenty [versions] of me. Now I’m on the twenty-first.”
At 31, Nella has accomplished much already, but her favorite and most important part of her story so far is “the number of people that I got to be… there are at least twenty [versions] of me,” she says. “Now I’m on the twenty-first.” She defines her life as “a rollercoaster, but very enjoyable.” For Nella, there have been many defining periods, such as when she left Burundi due to the civil war that began in 1993. Arriving in The Netherlands, she didn’t speak Dutch or English and notes this as stultifying as “it was really hard to connect with [people].” At that time, there were few people from Nella’s home country in The Netherlands. She says, “Fun fact: a lot of people don’t know Burundi is a real country.”
With this wry remark, Nella elucidates the reason behind our conversation today and the themes Aeyde is exploring–themes of community, of interconnectedness, and the ties that unwittingly bind us all. We mull over the essence of connection and how it’s already challenging to create space for yourself in the world–not including when people believe where you hail from isn’t real. “I also had to learn that I was black… you know the color of your skin, but you don’t really know what that means until you’re told what that means,” she says. “It was a lot of learning who I was and, at the same time, becoming a woman and learning about me being queer.”
Unfamiliar dynamics–culturally, linguistically, societally–meant that the self-assured person we’re getting to know today had to work harder to find that within herself. Quietly confident, she’s unphased by direct questions and ascribes herself as “a slow burner. Talented, funny, just kind of goofy as well.”
At 31, Nella has accomplished much already, but her favorite and most important part of her story so far is “the number of people that I got to be… there are at least twenty [versions] of me,” she says. “Now I’m on the twenty-first.” She defines her life as “a rollercoaster, but very enjoyable.” For Nella, there have been many defining periods, such as when she left Burundi due to the civil war that began in 1993. Arriving in The Netherlands, she didn’t speak Dutch or English and notes this as stultifying as “it was really hard to connect with [people].” At that time, there were few people from Nella’s home country in The Netherlands. She says, “Fun fact: a lot of people don’t know Burundi is a real country.”
With this wry remark, Nella elucidates the reason behind our conversation today and the themes Aeyde is exploring–themes of community, of interconnectedness, and the ties that unwittingly bind us all. We mull over the essence of connection and how it’s already challenging to create space for yourself in the world–not including when people believe where you hail from isn’t real. “I also had to learn that I was black… you know the color of your skin, but you don’t really know what that means until you’re told what that means,” she says. “It was a lot of learning who I was and, at the same time, becoming a woman and learning about me being queer.”
Unfamiliar dynamics–culturally, linguistically, societally–meant that the self-assured person we’re getting to know today had to work harder to find that within herself. Quietly confident, she’s unphased by direct questions and ascribes herself as “a slow burner. Talented, funny, just kind of goofy as well.”
Nella was intentional in cultivating connections and finding community upon moving to The Netherlands. She says, “Putting myself out there and speaking about my story–that’s how you learn about people’s stories, and you can connect in deeper ways.”
For Nella, it was and continues to be a question of connection. “When do I feel most connected to those around me? When I look people in the eyes, whoever they are–whatever story you have, it’s like you don’t have to speak–there’s no language needed as we know it. I feel deeply connected when I can hold that space for someone, and they hold it for me.”
“Putting myself out there and speaking about my story–that’s how you learn about people’s stories, and you can connect in deeper ways.”
Nella was intentional in cultivating connections and finding community upon moving to The Netherlands. She says, “Putting myself out there and speaking about my story–that’s how you learn about people’s stories, and you can connect in deeper ways.”
For Nella, it was and continues to be a question of connection. “When do I feel most connected to those around me? When I look people in the eyes, whoever they are–whatever story you have, it’s like you don’t have to speak–there’s no language needed as we know it. I feel deeply connected when I can hold that space for someone, and they hold it for me.”
“Putting myself out there and speaking about my story–that’s how you learn about people’s stories, and you can connect in deeper ways.”
As a prolific model with covers for Vogue, Interview, and Le Mile magazines and campaigns for Calvin Klein, Nella inevitably tells stories–stories from the perspective of a brand, a publication, another photographer. She’s prosaic when we veer into navigating the boundaries of being a model on another photographer’s set. “When I’m on set, I never separate the two. When I’m modeling, I’m also doing photography, and vice versa,” she says. “Today, for instance [on the set of “The Collective”], even if I’m in front of the camera, I’m aware of the lights and know what sides of myself to show. I’m always doing both in a way.”
Her photography journey came about during a societal flashpoint. Nella recounts not having the bandwidth to devote herself to photography until 2020’s COVID lockdowns put paid to international travel and modeling assignments. And with time to build her photo studio, she found perspective. “I always wanted to have control over how I could tell my stories. Modeling, I don’t feel it gives you enough control,” she says. “I wanted to tell stories that I wasn’t seeing. I realized how important it is to have someone that knows your story telling your story.”
In 2023, Nella launched a series on Instagram called #theblackchair.
In it, she speaks to members of the LGBTQ+ community about their lives, their experiences, and their inspirations in a way that is beautiful and intimate but also accessible and relatable. Why did Nella decide to roll out this series on Instagram? She says, “I didn’t want to have any ideas put in my head. I just wanted to be as raw as possible. And to do that, I figured I’d put them on Instagram because that’s where I have full control and don’t have to answer to anybody.”
In another Instagram series published between late 2023 and early 2024, Nella captured individual and group profiles of depth and simplicity in Bujumbura, Burundi. The common thread between these probing series and Nella’s engagement with the world around her is one of radical vulnerability, which, she believes, “can inspire a lot of people. So, I wanted to share that.”
In this way, Nella is the contemporary incarnation of a classical muse. She’s endeavoring to reclaim her autonomy in an industry where her image, her creativity, and her sense of self are often subject to other people’s whims. And as a photographer with a nascent collection of cover shoots (most recently for Vogue Netherlands), she straddles the divide between model-as-muse and photographer-as-creative-curator. On the topic of muses, Nella tells us, “[they are] a source of inspiration at best, but also, something or someone that doesn’t feel outside of yourself. That’s how I would describe a muse.”
“When I’m dreaming, I can get to the bottom of how I feel. I dream in color, I dream in experiences, and I find most inspiration through dreams.”
Reflecting on how she corrals her bouts of inspiration, Nella tells us it rolls in waves, mostly when she’s dreaming. She says, “I keep a dream journal, and I go crazy for dreams. I find that when you’re asleep, you let go of everything that’s going on that day or another. And it’s just your subconscious mind playing with all these ideas. When I’m dreaming, I can get to the bottom of how I feel. I dream in color, I dream in experiences, and I find most inspiration through dreams.”
As we draw our conversation to a close, we touch again on the concepts of community, connection, and collaboration. Asking a parting question of Nella, she responds in the interrogative–a conversational quirk that has made our interview all the more engaging from beginning to end. “How do I hope others see me? I hope others see me how they see themselves–whatever that looks like. I hope I can be a mirror to people. Because I generally have good people around me. So, if I could be a mirror to them, then that’s amazing.”
“The Collective” Pt. 03 featuring Adina Fohlin is set to be released on Thursday, 28.03.2024.
Discover the new SS24 Kollektion here.
