21-year-old Kenyan-born model Malaika Firth stars in an arresting new editorial for Vogue Japan. The heavily-patterned, surrealist-influenced feature, shot by Italian fashion photographer Giampaolo Sgura, will hit the stands in May. See photos from the shoot, via WE ARE SO DROEË, in the gallery above.

A rising star in the fashion world, Firth was born in Mombasa to a half-Kenyan, half-Swiss mother, and a father of British, Seychellois and Ugandan descent, and was raised in Kenya until her family relocated to Barking, east London when she was seven. Her  modeling career began in 2011, when, according to an article published yesterday in The Guardian, she saw a Channel 4 documentary (The Model Agency) about Premier Model Management. Firth felt the London-based agency was a fit, and her mother soon phoned Premier's founder to arrange a meeting; the then 17-year-old was signed on the spot.

In 2013 Firth became the first black model since Naomi Campbell in 1994 to star in a Prada campaign. “After that Prada campaign when I was being compared to Naomi Campbell I was so happy," the now New York-based model said to The Guardian's Ed Cumming. "She’s a legend. And if things aren’t changing in fashion, they need to.” “People are allowed to talk about my race," she also told Cumming. "I like it. I guess I see myself as a kind of junior ambassador – I should pat myself on the head for that.”

For more on Malaika Firth, read her full interview with Ed Cumming for The Guardian.

H/T Saint Heron