Casablanca on a Sunday morning in mid-April. The heat had not yet descended. The medina — with its narrow walls, sun-warmed and bone white — still held the early light. In it, the souk, full of mint, leather and the smell of bread, saffron, cobalt and rust, led to a quarter claimed by one of the city’s soccer clubs, where boys in jerseys crowded around motorbikes and café televisions and everyone seemed to know someone who knew the game.
Enter Imaan Hammam, a Dutch model of Moroccan-Egyptian descent, flowing like water between the narrow walls, stopping for mint tea in the souk, talking to shopkeepers and climbing into the back of an espresso truck parked beside a pitch. Hammam, who has fronted campaigns for Chanel, Versace and Fendi and walked nearly every major runway in fashion, was home. As the PLAYERS crew followed, we found a Morocco that wasn’t just the backdrop for a shoot, but one that was lived in. This was Hammam’s Casablanca: the memory, the language, the family and the feeling. “It didn’t feel like a supermodel dropped into a place,” photographer JP Micallef said later. “It just felt like Imaan returning home.”
By late afternoon, when the light cut at a slant — clay-warm and slow — local girls called to set had arrived carrying soccer balls and kicking up dust with their sneakers. At first they were shy, staring at one of the world’s most recognizable models. But Hammam made jokes between takes, asked about their lives and their ambitions and played rousing games of foosball, quickly dissolving their unease. At some point, production no longer felt like a fashion story and much more like a day unfolding around a magnetic figure.
Eventually, the crew saw something else potent begin to emerge: the pride, resilience and aspiration inherent in Morocco’s soccer culture. Once you’d seen it, you knew it was part of the language of the city. In the last decade, Morocco has stepped onto the global stage, from soccer to fashion to culture, in new and exciting ways. To hear Hammam speak about it is to witness the protectiveness of someone who saw what it took for the city to become itself.
By dusk, as the light left the streets, Micallef knew it had been “one of those beautiful days,” the kind that stays with you forever.
What follows is Casablanca that day, in her words.
“The women of Morocco taught me that power does not always need to be loud. Sometimes it looks like sacrifice. Patience. Endurance. Showing up every day no matter what.”
