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Summary
In this interview, Misturah Owolabi, the Executive Director at Misty Glam Company, shared her inspiration for establishing an inclusive modelling company. She also revealed strategies to champion representation and ideals to become a business success.
Owolabi Misturah Abisola, fondly known as Misty, is an award-winning creative copywriter whose team delivered Nigeria’s first Cannes Lions-winning campaign in 2023 with Soot City Life Expectancy. She is also the founder of Misty Glam Company (MGC), Nigeria’s first fully inclusive commercial modelling agency, which celebrates models of diverse skin tones, body types, and identities, including people with disabilities and visible differences.
Living with lupus, Misty has turned her journey into purposeful advocacy. Through her work, she consistently challenges societal norms, using creativity to promote inclusion, representation, and awareness of chronic illness and overlooked communities.
In an exclusive interview with Naija Feminist Media, Misty shares professional insights, creative wins, and her work in changing the face of modelling in Nigeria.
Misturah Owolabi on Creativity, Advocacy, and Redefining Beauty Standards
You are a renowned creative director and health advocate. Can you tell us a bit about your upbringing and the values that shaped who you are today?
I always say I don’t have a dramatic origin story, but my parents’ selflessness shaped my upbringing. Our home was a safe space for family, strangers and everyone going through tough times. I grew up not even realising I was the first child until much later, because I had older cousins who lived with us for years, after losing their parents or other circumstances.
My mum is also the type of person who’d follow you to fight if someone tried to trample on your rights, and she’d carry the matter on her head in a way that’d make people wonder if she was the victim. That instilled in me the values of helping, advocating, and being a safe space. As a creative, I naturally gravitated towards advocacy campaigns. And when I started working as a creative, I always found myself constantly seeking out advocacy campaigns and initiatives.
One of my proudest achievements was being part of the team that won Nigeria’s Cannes Lions in 2023 for a campaign supporting soot-polluted communities. I also saw firsthand how certain people were excluded from the modelling and advertising space simply for not being “brand fit.” That realisation led to the birth of MGC.
Later, being diagnosed with a lesser-known medical condition pushed me into health advocacy. It felt like the universe affirming that advocacy was my path. Those early values still guide everything I do across creativity, inclusion, and health.
How has living with lupus influenced your journey, both personally and professionally?
Managing Lupus has made me more human and more focused. You don’t experience a flare and come out the same. Some days, I wake up in pain, while on other days, I power through meetings with the worst headaches, but one thing I’d always say is that living with lupus has made me intentional about living. Now I chase meaning. It also deepened my empathy. I’ve always seen people for more than how they look, but lupus taught me more empathy. Lupus also taught me grace, strategy, and the quiet strength of asking for help when needed. It also gave me my advocacy lens because once you’ve lived in a body the world doesn’t always understand, you become more attuned to others who are navigating their own unique journeys.
Misty Glam Company (MGC) is fast becoming one of the most inclusive modelling agencies in Nigeria. What inspired you to start the organisation?
MGC was born out of frustration and love. While working in the advertising industry, I worked on many campaigns, won awards, and worked on brands that shaped culture. But something was always missing. I loved to create advocacy-proactive ideas to target different societal issues, and when we pitched them to clients and brands, they never cared. Models had to look a certain way before they were considered, and that felt deeply wrong to me. So, I decided to do something about it. I started Misty Glam Company, Nigeria’s first inclusive commercial modelling agency.
The mission was to be a modelling agency that mirrors society. I built a team of unconventional models and started pitching them to brands, preaching the gospel of inclusivity because, really, Nigeria was lagging behind when it came to inclusion and representation. But what I found was heartbreaking. The rejection wasn’t always about talent; it was deeper.
That was the moment I realised this discrimination was beyond a beauty, advertising or modelling industry issue; it was a societal one. So my work expanded from inclusion in modelling to full advocacy for unconventional and marginalised groups. In summary, my journey into advocacy started in the world of beauty, but it has also led me to something far bigger: the fight for dignity, acceptance, and visibility.
As someone who’s navigated the Nigerian creative industry for over seven years, what’s been your biggest lesson?
The biggest lesson is that real work happens away from the spotlight and that it takes courage to advocate for what you believe in when it’s not trending or even to speak up in rooms where silence is more convenient.
The creative industry is highly performative. It will take years for things to change significantly, no matter how many brands or stakeholders promise to embrace inclusivity in the creative world. Lots of brands talk about inclusion, but very few are actually ready to roll up their sleeves and do the work. Everyone is waiting for inclusion to be “in season” or viral-worthy. The real creative risk is doing something different without expecting any applause. I’ve also learnt a lot about the power of collaboration. The strongest creative campaigns or most impactful causes thrive because of collaboration. Collaboration over competition. Not everyone will see your vision at the start, but when that one person does, it will open the right doors.
MGC is organising Nigeria’s first beauty pageant for persons with albinism. What was the strategy behind the initiative? Do you see this pageant as a one-time event or recurring?
Actually, our goal is for this to become more than a pageant but also a platform for advocacy. We knew we wanted to spark conversations, shift narratives, and celebrate visibility. The strategy was to use a creative format that already has the world’s attention: pageantry, and reimagine it as a space for advocacy. And instead of judging based on beauty and looks, contestants will be empowered and trained to take on a stage where they’ll showcase their talents and also share an advocacy pitch for how they will become ambassadors of their communities. We are calling it the Miss Albinism Advocacy Pageant for a reason.
The goal is to find a voice. A leader. An ambassador. And this is only the beginning. It will be recurring, and it will also evolve. Each year, we will use this platform to spotlight communities that have been marginalised for too long. And because we represent other models, such as specially abled models, and models with vitiligo, we want to have annual events like this to advocate for these communities as well. This year, it’s an advocacy pageant for persons with albinism. Next year, we intend to include one of the other communities, like the specially abled community. In the coming year, we will add another community to it, ensuring we are spotlighting all marginalised groups, making them visible and starting conversations simultaneously.
What would be your advice to young Nigerian girls regarding ambition and identity?
I’d like to say that your dreams are very valid. There’s nothing you cannot become in this life. As long as the universe can put that vision in your mind, you have the capacity to see it through. Also, growth doesn’t always feel loud or obvious. Sometimes it’s in the small things, like trying again after failing, showing up even when you’re tired, and not just giving up.
Don’t let the fear of being too much or not enough stop you from starting. You were made to build, to create, and to dream bigger. So always take that first step, even if it’s messy, uncertain, or uncomfortable. It doesn’t have to be perfect. And just like I always remind myself every morning. You don’t have to fit into one box. It’s okay to be many things at once and to figure it out along the way. It’s also very okay to reinvent yourself every two days. Just don’t give up on your dreams. Women are doing amazing things around the world, and you will not be left out.
