All the trending news about fashion model and content creator, Raheem Abike Halimah better known as Papaya Ex has been about glamour and glitz. When she commissioned her Lagos home recently, she made a big fuss with N5 million naira cake made for her. And the heat wouldn’t let up a few days ago when she celebrated her birthday, which came with all the trappings of beauty, style and mesmerising art.
However, in a past chat with Potpourri, Abike Arab Money as she is called by close friends explained her obsession with fashion and how her life’s journey has started as a joke but born out of passion and doing what she likes to do.
“I liked fashion and beauty from day one, then I decided to make it my career and so far so good, I haven’t regretted choosing this career path. Fashion is my lifestyle basically, it starts from what I wear and the clothes I find attractive. So my lifestyle is what speaks for me as a fashion model,” she said with pride.
“I didn’t plan to go into it actually, I just started by posting pictures like a random pretty girl, then along the line, people fell in love with my content, little by little, I found myself in the industry. Generally, a fashion model to me is someone that has the ability to visualize fashion and bring style to life. So, for me as a person, fashion is my lifestyle,” she added.
Speaking further on being a fashion model, Papaya Ex said it all appears as glamour and glitz but it entails so much hard work.
“Experience as a fashion model in Nigeria is hectic but bare-able at least, also time consuming from creating content, posting contents, appearances, because sometimes I shoot almost 20 hours in a day then before we now talk about trolls online. It’s a long story because people feel like they know me and my personal life too much, so they want to judge all day, and honestly, I just would be chilling and doing my thing how I know to do it, life isn’t that serious. Being a fashion model sounds glamorous, but it requires a lot of hard work and consistency. However, spending your day making others feel truly pampered, or looking great can be both fun, exhausting and rewarding,” she explained.