Through the lens of a successful modelling career as a second-generation immigrant and ovarian cancer survivor, the Brooklynite details a unique yet universal experience of learning to practice self-love.

PHOTOGRAPHER MAX PAPENDIECK

STYLIST AMY MACH

INTERVIEWER RACHEL CHEUNG

With editorial features in the likes of Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, Chinese-Canadian model Ash Foo has collected a remarkable range of experiences throughout her career, complete with a robust roster of fashion houses such as Hermès, Dion Lee, Calvin Klein, Jonathan Simkhai, and Dior. Following an intensive battle with ovarian cancer in 2019, the New York-based model has since made a remarkable comeback to the industry. Alongside her return, Foo brings a tale of life’s quintessential test: resilience in the face of adversity. With a newfound sense of empowerment in her journey to recovery, Foo elaborates on the eﬀect of her diagnosis within her personal and professional spheres. Between her cultural values, healthcare experience, and creative expression as an ever-growing individual, Foo helps us unravel the universal experience of learning to love across the multi-facets of life, emphasizing the importance of discovering self-worth in times of distress.

*Dress CHRISTIAN COWAN,*
*shoes JISOO BAIK*

Becoming recognizable in spreads, on runways, and billboards was a phenomenon that did not occur for Foo overnight. Growing up in Toronto as an only child of a Malaysian dad and Singaporean mom, Ash recounts her early experience recognizing a love for fashion, recalling, “I always knew this was the space I belonged in, I just didn't know what I wanted to do speciﬁcally.” Foo’s mom signed her up for a fashion camp during high school, hoping the experience would shed light on the diﬀerent roles in the industry. It was during this program where she was initially scouted. Promising her parents a high school diploma before embarking on the opportunity, Foo completed her early education before moving to New York to pursue modeling full-time in 2014.

Growing up with an inherent passion for creative expression, Foo described how she loved the arts from a young age. Maintaining a more reserved, soft-spoken aura since her childhood, Foo never gravitated towards performance art, rather, turning to visual mediums of sketching, photography, and painting. “My mom would go to the dollar store and buy me canvases as a kid, and I would paint every weekend,” she shared, remarking how the practice has stayed with her today. When it comes to her early sartorial sense, Foo admits to disliking the tween trends of Abercrombie and Hollister, holding preference for the hunt of unique pieces at her local thrift store. “I love vintage shopping. When I was a kid, my mom used to take me to Value Village, and I just loved the search for something special,” she said. “That felt cool to me—having something uniquely my own.”

Although her transition into the modeling industry was somewhat natural, it was not, however, immune to resistance or struggle. Given her Asian upbringing, Foo was on the receiving end of great hesitation from her parents when it came to pursuing a career in the creative industry. “It was not until I started showing that I could provide for myself that my parents started to believe in the legitimacy of the jobs I was doing. I have always had this mentality of needing to prove myself, which motivated me to work really hard,” Foo said, admitting that even now, she feels surprised with herself for how long she has been a part of the modeling world.

Considering her exposure to love at an early age, Foo noted that while her parents worked frequently, she recalled the quality time spent with her parents when they were home. She recalled bonding moments of taking time to hang out, watch a movie, or go on a trip. While she felt love in these moments, it is in retrospect that Foo realized how her parents’ words of aﬃrmation were also their ways of expressing love for her: “They wouldn’t necessarily tell me they loved me, but it was more, ‘oh, we're so proud of you for doing well on this, or because you joined this activity,’” she said. Although she can’t speak across all Asian cultures, from her experience, “older generations of Asian parents have a harder time expressing love. Looking back, I feel like in their way of expressing love, they were just really, really proud.”

*Top PRIVATE POLICY,*
*skirt JISOO BAIK,*
*shoes ACT NO. 1*

When asked to deﬁne love in her own words, Ash was prepared, having deeply considered it as a key element in her journey so far. “Love is pure and beautiful but also incredibly diﬃcult,” she said. “I think love is something that we learn since birth, as to love another human being is perhaps one of the most diﬃcult tasks to be entrusted with. To love someone is to simply care about their happiness and wellbeing. In our journeys in love, there are sacriﬁces we make, risks we take. We let people down, we help people grow, we commit to promises we support in ways we know how, and we give not for the sake of giving but because nothing brings us more joy than to see the smile on our loved one's faces,” she explained. “To me, love means the ultimate desire of one's happiness, including your own.” Given the multi-dimensional nature of love as it is open to interpretation based on personal experience, it is diﬃcult to sum up the essence of it in so few words. Foo clariﬁed that her deﬁnition was only one dimension of love, because to her, love is inﬁnite.

When it comes to love as it exists in her social spheres, Foo has always been the type of person to wear her heart on her sleeve. “I’ve always loved deeply, like, I’d be over the moon,” she admits. “I don't know where that came from, but I'm not afraid to express that part of myself,” she said. Being one to prioritize genuine connection with others, Foo recalled feeling out of place when she ﬁrst moved to New York for work. She described the natural cliques of girls that would form backstage at fashion shows, because they all spoke the same language. “I just found myself in a situation of not knowing where I belong, and I feel like I've always been this weird mixture, not knowing which box I ﬁt into a lot of the time,” she said.

While this outsider quality has existed during the early stages of her career, Foo pointed out the memorable, love-ﬁlled moments in which she felt an empowered sense of community and excitement. She recalled a recent trip toLisbon for an Hermès beauty campaign: “Being put in an environment where you're sharing the same passion, there's something very special that happens… there’s that magical connection, that bonding that occurs—that's love. Wanting to accomplish a vision together, I feel, is really special.” Separately, remembering a special moment in Mugler’s SS21 show, Foo recalled strutting down the runway in a wine-red dress. Featuring an asymmetric, mesh, long sleeve glove, V-shaped slash cutouts, and a delicate ruching at the skirt, this look was one of her favorites. “I felt so sexy and empowered. I felt fricken cool,” she said, attributing her love for the moment to the rarity of it.

Diving into her diagnosis and the months of fear and loss that would come with it, Foo described her experience with ovarian cancer as it aﬀected her sense of self. When she ﬁrst noticed a bloating sensation in her abdominal region, she neglected the symptoms, prioritizing work at the time. Given that she was in New York, Foo had to plan a trip back to Canada in order to receive proper health care. Upon touching her stomach, Foo’s doctor immediately recognized the irregularity of the sensation, insisting that an ultrasound be conducted. Foo was assigned an oncologist the same day.

Considering herself a very healthy person, Foo explained how she ate whole, clean foods at the time, exercised frequently, and slept nearly eight hours every night. “I was the pinnacle of health,” she said. For this reason, the diagnosis was a surprise, and for a long time she couldn’t help but question, “why me?” After a few weeks of intensive scans and tests, Foo was diagnosed with dysgerminoma—a type of germ cell tumor that is common for women in their twenties. Her doctors explained that the tumor was housed in her right ovary and was 20 centimeters, or roughly the size of a small football. She went into a laparotomy surgery two days later. While there was success in clearing that tumor out, unfortunately there was a small tumor growing in her left ovary as well, which led Foo to undergo two more procedures: IVF to aid her chances of bearing children, and chemotherapy for the left side tumor. “I felt so disconnected from my body,” she said. “I went through three cycles of chemo in three months, did the whole thing—and the treatment wasn’t working.” With that, Foo went through her ﬁnal surgery, this time on her left side to remove the ovary all together. “I don’t think I even existed for three months. I just existed to survive through that,” she said.

Foo noted that the experience made her become much more appreciative of the little moments in life. “I would look in the mirror and not recognize who I was. It was heart-breaking because I lacked so much love for myself anymore,” she said. As a young woman with a fast-growing modeling career, Foo was deeply attached to how she looked. “The parts of me that I felt like represented who I was… they changed. I had scars from the procedures and lost all my hair. I held too much of myself in how I looked, and now, learning from that, I just think of embracing your imperfections, being you, as you – that's really beautiful.”

“But being able to receive love from others was what saved me.” She explained how there were times in the hospital where she was alone, most of the time only speaking to the nurses who came in and out. “Going back to the love language of my family, my parents came in shifts, just being there for me. One day, my dad slept in the hospital, and he did this funny thing,” Foo recalled, laughing, “where he fell asleep in one of the gurneys in the hall. The nurses knew it was my dad, so they tucked him in with fresh, warm blankets from the laundry. When he told me that, I was like, oh, wow—that's love.”

Health and wellness aﬀect much of our daily lives. Foo expressed gratitude for her ability to receive medical care during this time: “If I didn't have the opportunity to go to Canada, who knows what would have happened? Who knows how much longer I would have left it oﬀ for? To be able to have access to that care is a privilege,” she said. As we approach two years navigating a global pandemic, conversations surrounding our health are discussed with increased urgency. While young people tend to think illness doesn't aﬀect them, Foo pointed out how damaging that thinking can be. “We take our health for granted and we don't get things checked when they need to be checked, but illness does not discriminate. That's an important message I want to share, is that as a young person, you have to take care of yourself.”

Currently, Foo works with a New York-based organisation called Tina's Wish, conducting research for early detection for ovarian cancer. She shared excitement for an upcoming Carolina Herrera fragrance campaign alongside the launch of an Hermès project. On a concluding note, Foo reiterated the importance of self-love as it projects and reﬂects in the many ways of how you treat others. “We’re so wrapped up in the life we want to have, the life we want to live. What others think, what we ‘should’ be doing. Trying to match the perceptions of what we see and are told. In doing all those things, we're losing ourselves in the process. We need to commit to learning about ourselves, ﬁnding ourselves, loving ourselves,” she said. Foo expressed hope for the lessons that future generations will teach us and wished her message could reach and resonate with young people everywhere today: in times of distress, self-discovery will follow. While our journeys may include a handful of hardship, out of adversity comes a newfound understanding of the world around us – and there is no greater learning than the love you learn to express towards yourself.

This profile was published in The WOW N° 6.

Issue6 available now.

Photographer: MAX PAPENDIECK

Stylist : AMY MACH @ LALALAND ARTISTS

Hair: SHIN ARIMA @ HOME AGENCY

Make-up: OLIVIA BARARD @ STREETERS

Model: ASH FOO @NEW YORK MODELS

Photography Assistants: TOM MALTBIE, SAM KANG & TUGCAN TEMIZKAN

Digitech: TINA ZABALIEV

Styling Assistant: ALANA SARDO

ASH FOO

TIM YIP

JESSICA HENWICK