October 2025
Month 20xx
Jacob Marion with Daysha Loppie
Charmaine Gooden
Highlights
Beginning of article
Jessica Bowden’s name is inextricably tied to decades of creativity in the Maritimes. She’s done it all in the fashion industry: hair, clothes, modelling, publishing and event production, all powered by her drive for advocacy and an energy she refuses to call work. “I never call it a job. I call it playing in my playground, and it’s my career,” says Bowden.
Early Life and Career
Born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Bowden grew up in Mulgrave Park, surrounded by a hard-working, tightly knit community in the city’s north end. Her heritage stretches back five generations to Antigua and Jamaica. Bowden’s grandfather, Fred Johnson and three of his sons worked for VIA Rail as Black porters. Her great-uncle James R. Johnson became Nova Scotia’s first Black lawyer, and her mother, his niece, worked three jobs to raise seven children.
“I am the middle child, so the whole fight for attention comes into play when you’re a kid, and people look at you like you’re crazy,” Bowden recalls. “I remember actually planning how to steal your attention.” Her go-to method was crafting hand-me-down clothes into brand new, fashionably weird creations.
School presented its own challenges for Bowden. “They had you pigeon-holed in these little communities,” she says, “You’re dealing with racist teachers who don’t see you being worth nothing. You’re constantly trying to explain to them that you are worth something.”
In 1973, while in grade nine at Richmond School, Bowden became pregnant. Towards the end of the school year, after the baby was born, Bowden went to pick up her report card and was disheartened to see the words “Less likely to succeed” written across the document.
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This fiery personality and a won’t-back-down attitude became Bowden’s calling card within the Halifax fashion scene.
Before she knew it, she began working regularly as a model, and $25 show bookings turned into big paychecks and opportunities to walk in all of Nova Scotia’s notable fashion shows.
Despite challenges she faced as a young mother, Bowden was committed to making something of herself. After high school, she joined a government program, YES Canada, to learn how to be a receptionist and to pay the bills. One afternoon, while delivering mail at work, she spotted a man in a grand office, feet propped on a gleaming mahogany desk. “I’m like, ‘Excuse me, how dare you!’ People will walk in here, and see this gorgeous desk and see you like this, so lazy looking,” she says, recalling her confrontation with the manager.
The next day, she was called up to the boss’s office, thinking it was the end. To her surprise, he didn’t fire her. He liked Bowden’s spunk and what she had to say, asking her what she was interested in doing for work. Two weeks later, Bowden was no longer in the receptionist program; she was now designing the window displays at Sam the Record Man.
By 21, Bowden began exploring modelling. Her first audition at an agency, on Quinpool Road in Halifax, ended abruptly. She was told she was “too short” and not “ethnically marketable.” On the way home, the tears rolled from her eyes, and her head hung low. But there was one mantra she continued to repeat to herself. “I said, ‘Don’t you dare put your head down. Don’t you dare put your head down.’”
Three weeks later, encouraged by her friend Dwayne Lowe, she attended another open audition at the Craven A building on Joseph Howe Drive. When Bowden’s turn came, there was a problem. She hadn’t received a number when checking in, and didn’t have an agent to vouch for her.
Bowden thought quickly on her feet, writing the word “next” on a piece of paper she found. When the announcement called the “next” person up, she came running. The coordinator called it ingenious. “They were done! Because now they know I’m not just Black. I got talent,” she says.
This fiery personality and a won’t-back-down attitude became Bowden’s calling card within the Halifax fashion scene. Before she knew it, she began working regularly as a model, and $25 show bookings turned into big paychecks and opportunities to walk in all of Nova Scotia’s notable fashion shows.
Bowden even began to choreograph local runway shows. “I was the opener, middle and closer of the fashion show… and they made sure I was in it because they knew I could always carry a beat,” she recalls.
Soon, calls began to come from outside Nova Scotia, and Bowden would travel to cities like Ottawa for Fashion Week and Toronto for modelling competitions. She was featured in videos, movies and ad campaigns. Bowden even modelled for Jeanne Beker’s fashion lines, creating a nationwide career for herself.
Fashion and Diversity
Being a prominent Black model in Halifax, Bowden encountered her share of racism in the fashion world. While leaving a show together with longtime collaborator Kevin Carvery, one of the only other working Black models in Nova Scotia, she heard the press call out something that rubbed her the wrong way. They asked, “Where’s the Black model?”
That moment changed everything for Bowden. “I said, ‘Let me explain something to you. Going forward, I will not touch that stage unless you say, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, Jessica.’ Because they will know my name.” In no time, the entire city knew her by name.
Carvery says Bowden’s presence on stage always commanded attention, and she knew how to entertain. “One performance Jess and I usually did during our fashion shows, we did Ike and Tina Turner, we would lip-sync to ‘Rolling on the River.’ [i.e., ‘Proud Mary’]. Jess would dress as Tina, and I would have a guitar and pretend I was Ike; the audience loved it.”
The pair also teamed up at industry events. “We used to do hair conventions when they were held in Halifax. I think Jess was one of the hair models, but at the end of the convention, they would have a fashion show, which we did,” recalls Carvery.
Even off the runway, their chemistry shone. “Jess and I danced together in a dancing contest against four other couples. We came in first place and won a trip to Freeport, Bahamas.”
In 2007, Bowden took a step back from modelling due to a leg injury. She then launched Teens Now Talk, a Halifax-based youth magazine with 64 pages of stories, photography and creative work by young people. It was a platform for voices too often silenced. One of the young women Bowden mentored and included in the magazine even went on to start her own nonprofit.
Her work in representation and empowerment expanded far beyond the pages of her magazine. Bowden spearheaded events like the TNT Passport 2 Youth Success XPO, the Hali-Cares Fashion Show, Drag Idol Atlantic, the Mini Apollo Talent Contest and It Ain’t Nothing But A Party. She also founded Visual Impact Modelling Agency and Ice Productions.
With Bowden’s success, she made sure to never pull up the ladder behind her. “Finally, with my agency, I could see others who look like me on stage. We filled the gap and presented tons of Black models,” she says.
It wasn’t just other Black models that she uplifted; when Bowden opened her modelling agency in 1994, it was one of the first to showcase true diversity in Halifax’s fashion scene. “When we were doing our fashion shows, you’d see full figures. I’m talking full-figured seniors, I mean, we had one lady, she was like 81, and she was posing. We even had one young girl who was an amputee,” she recalls.
Influence and Legacy
Bowden’s career is marked by a string of firsts: the first African Nova Scotian to win the Model Search of Canada, the first female African Nova Scotian bodybuilding champion, and, in 2012, the first living woman honoured on the Wall of Honour at the Black Cultural Centre for Nova Scotia.
In 1987, The Guinness Book of World Records even awarded Bowden for her participation in a live mannequin competition, where her one hour and 15 minutes of posing broke the world record.
It doesn’t end there. Bowden has received many prestigious awards, including the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee Medal, the Hope Success and Empowerment Award, a Women of Excellence Award and the Rev. Dr. W.P. Oliver Wall of Honour, among others.
An accomplished and respected businesswoman, Bowden has achieved success in a variety of industries, from owning popular hair salons and clothing stores to wardrobe consulting and even acting.
Bowden’s modelling agency was one of the first to showcase true diversity in Canadian fashion. “When we were doing our fashion shows, you’d see full figures. I’m talking full-figured seniors, I mean, we had one lady, she was like 81, and she was posing. We even had one young girl who was an amputee,” she recalls.
Now a sought-after motivational speaker and consultant, she says, “I stand on the shoulders of others, because where I am today is based on somebody else doing what they do best. I do not see other Black organizations, businesses or people as my competition, but an opportunity for collaboration.”
In 2015, Bowden was awarded the Meritorious Service Medal from the Governor General for her extensive work empowering teens in Nova Scotia. “I think it’s important, because I’m of the mindset that I don’t want you to find out what I do when I’m dead. What I do will empower your child,” she says.
From window displays to runways, magazines to mentorship, Bowden has carved her own lane and left it wide enough for others to follow. Her story is a testament to persistence, creativity and the conviction that, with enough self-belief, the narrowest path can become a wide, welcoming stage.
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