Adwoa Aboah owes her green thumb to happenstance. “I’ve got a south-facing garden, which my mom’s really jealous about because it just grows everything in it,” the Londoner says of her home there, surprisingly lush. “It’s a hot box.” Aboah considers herself a late bloomer in the horticultural sense, even though greenery fills the elegantly appointed room she’s in for a Zoom conversation this past spring. “We’re at the Jo Malone London townhouse—mega, so nice,” she explains, sounding like someone who doesn’t exaggerate for effect. “I have to push myself to go and involve myself in nature, just because I think, through and through, I am a city girl and I love that I’ve been brought up in a city and I love everything to do about being in a city.”
The model’s voice, gravelly in timbre with a polished accent, seems to reflect that origin story. Though she was born into the fashion community (Aboah’s British mother runs a management agency, her Ghanaian father is a talent scout), it wasn’t a frictionless path to the December 2017 cover of British Vogue—notably the first under Edward Enninful’s direction, featuring peacock-blue eye shadow by Pat McGrath and photography by Steven Meisel. Aboah has been candid about her teen struggles with addiction and mental health. In 2015—by then a familiar presence in high-profile runway shows and editorials—Aboah launched Gurls Talk, a nonprofit that blossomed out of an Instagram account. The organization operates as a multifaceted community space, for IRL events and podcast conversations and resource sharing at one’s fingertips. Her most recent Google searches, she says, are “Sanrio world and then the fentanyl crisis, but that’s where my brain is right now. It’s, like, all the things that we have to think about.”
When Jo Malone London approached Aboah to be a global ambassador in 2022, this shared interest in well-being cemented their relationship. Jo Malone London, over the past decade, has supported a variety of mental health causes through proceeds from its Charity Candle. As part of a recently announced partnership with Unicef, the brand has pledged $2 million over the year-long period ending this October. Gurls Talk is another beneficiary, as Aboah readies the organization for the next phase of growth—work she balances with auditions, having pursued drama in school. (This conversation took place before the SAG-AFTRA strike.)
September brings the final season of Netflix’s Top Boy, a crime show set in East London that has given Aboah her small-screen break. And this month, she stars in the campaign for Jo Malone London’s newest launch, English Pear & Sweet Pea—cinematic in its own right, with cartoonishly giant fruit atop a button-cute Mini Cooper. The fragrance (ethereal on skin, as if effervescent) features a novel concentrated extract, upcycled from pear water leftover from the food industry’s juice process. To Aboah, a “spring baby” who turned 31 in May, sweet pea conveys a spirit of renewal, “where you start feeling like you’re ready to get out of your tracksuits and start seeing people again,” she says. Here, she talks about creative outlets, recommended reading, and what the next generation of girls are talking about.
Vanity Fair: We last spoke at the Vanity Fair Oscar Party in 2022, on the cusp of your Jo Malone London announcement. What has surprised you about this relationship?
From the get-go it felt like an instant connection. It’s meeting a new friend and bypassing all the small talk and getting to know each other. That has been really refreshing because it feels like we can get straight to the work that needs to be done. I’m just speaking to the individuals that I know at Jo Malone London, but obviously they are a massive brand and there are so many people that need to approve certain things—I don’t necessarily feel that. Creatively it’s invigorating, and I feel really proud every time I see the imagery that we do together. But also on the side of mental health and Gurls Talk, it’s like: Oh wow, we’re actually doing the stuff. They’re sticking to their word.
Do the key fragrance notes, English pear and sweet pea, stir up any associations for you?