Emma Coronel, wife of ‘El Chapo’ Guzman, arrives at Milan Fashion Week to resume her modeling career

Emma Coronel is getting ready to make her Fashion Week debut. The wife of Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán will walk the runway in Milan this Sunday, September 22 as the star of the Spring/Summer 2024 collection of April Black Diamond, a leading designer based in Los Angeles, California, who dresses celebrities at Cannes and dozens of quinceañeras looking for a spectacular dress for their party. Coronel will model under the spotlight at the Palazzo Serbelloni, a historic neoclassical building where Napoleon once lived, to resume and continue her international modeling and influencer career.

“Our upcoming fashion show will not focus solely on the dresses, but on the stories that bring them to life. As a designer, I believe everyone deserves a second chance, and fashion is the perfect platform to highlight transformation, strength, and resilience,” April Black Diamond wrote in a post on her Instagram account, in which she poses alongside Coronel. “You see, I told you that ¡sí se puede! We all have the right to fulfill our dreams and to be reborn like the bird and start over,” Puerto Rican-born lawyer, model and regional Mexican singer Mariel Colón Miró wrote on her social networks. Colón was part of Guzmán Loera’s legal defense in the United States and will also model this Sunday alongside Coronel, a former beauty queen.

Coronel, 35, was the Mexican drug lord’s last romantic partner before he was arrested and extradited to the United States in January 2017. El Chapo was sentenced to life in prison in July 2019. The wife of the drug trafficker, then considered the most powerful in the world, went to court in New York during the 11-week trial, grabbing the spotlight of the tabloids at every turn. But her story soon took a turn when she was arrested on February 22, 2021 at the international airport of Washington-Dulles (Virginia), accused by U.S. authorities of being her husband’s accomplice.

In June of that same year, at the age of 31, Coronel pleaded guilty to drug trafficking and money laundering charges in the United States. Prosecutors in the case determined that the model, who has Mexican and U.S. nationality, “worked closely with the command and control structure” of the Sinaloa Cartel, for which she was sentenced to 36 months in prison in November. However, six months before completing her sentence, El Chapo’s wife was released from the minimum security prison south of Los Angeles where she was being held.

After regaining her freedom in September 2023, Emma Coronel, with whom the drug lord has twin daughters, immediately resumed her public life and reappeared at a Mexican Independence Day party in Los Angeles. “Emma will take to the runway and represent not only my designs, but also a movement toward redemption and empowerment,” said designer April Black Diamond. “This show will be a testament to the belief that what truly makes a woman stand out is not just the dress she wears, but the strength she carries within.”