A dream cast for the new Pirelli calendar shot by Tim Walker

For the 45th Pirelli calendar, the British fashion photographer revisits Lewis Carroll’s most famous tale. High in fantasy, this version focuses on African beauty, with an Alice embodied by Duckie Thot, the young Australian-Sudanese model and muse for Fenty Beauty. “When I met Duckie Thot, I instantly knew she was my Alice, it was just so obvious. I wanted a model whose image hadn’t been dulled by fame,” Tim Walker told us.

This flamboyant re-enactment is led by iconic figures from fashion, music and cinema including models Naomi Campbell and Adwoa Aboah, actors Djimon Houson as the King of Hearts and the astonishing duchess Whoopi Goldberg, artists Sean “Diddy” Combs as an elegant executioner and American drag-queen RuPaul. A reinvigorating activism emanates from this bold shoot, between the dreamlike decors and the incredible costumes by Ghanaian stylist Edward Enninful, the new editor-in-chief of British Vogue. Since 1964, the Italian group Pirelli, the fifth biggest producer of tyres in the world, has also been publishing the Pirelli calendar, hotly anticipated by collectors and photography enthusiasts alike. Until now only Terence Donovan had immortalised black models for the 1987 edition, which also featured Naomi Campbell.