Born in China and left at an orphanage for having albinism, Xueli entered life marked as a mistake. The staff named her “snow white and beautiful,” a fragile blessing against a culture that often hid or shunned people like her. When a Dutch family adopted her, they didn’t try to fix her difference; they folded it into everyday life, teaching her that safety and love could be louder than whispers and stares.
At eleven, she stepped into modeling almost by accident, yet every photograph became quiet defiance. A London photographer treated her not as an anomaly, but as a collaborator, and something shifted: she began to see what the lens saw—strength, presence, and unrepeatable beauty. Her Vogue Italia feature turned her into a symbol, but her purpose is more intimate: to stand where she was once erased, so that children with albinism learn they were never a mistake at all.
