Just months after a video of her parents’ tearful reactions captured the world’s attention, Bhavitha Mandava is proving she is far more than a fleeting internet sensation. The ‘architect-product-designer-assistive-tech’ turned model, who made history in December 2025 as the first Indian woman to open a show for Chanel, has officially claimed her spot in the fashion world with her debut cover for British Vogue. Also read | 25-year-old Indian model who opened Chanel 2026 show shares her parents’ emotional reaction: Watch
British Vogue’s March 2026 cover interview, released on February 11, dives deep into the meteoric rise of the NYU graduate. While Bhavitha’s walk through the Chanel Metropolitan Museum of Art set in New York in December 2025 was a triumph, the model reveals that the weight of the moment didn’t truly hit her until she saw the global reaction.
Redefining beauty standards
In her British Vogue interview, Bhavitha, 25, addresses the complex cultural intersection she now inhabits – for a girl who was finishing her master’s degree in New York in May, becoming a symbol for representation has been a whirlwind. She candidly discusses the double-edged sword of her visibility, noting the contrast between Western and Indian perceptions.
She says: “Opening the Chanel show was deeply personal to me, and then suddenly it became symbolic in a way I didn’t expect. In the West, it touched on this question of who gets to be included in the idea of beauty and whether Indian women are even allowed to be seen as traditionally beautiful. In India, colourism is really so deep-rooted. People said I looked like ‘any girl on the street’ because fair skin has often been treated as the default. I don’t think it’s really about me, it’s culture renegotiating itself.”
A ‘personal win’ for the diaspora
Despite the noise, the ‘Bhavitha effect’ is undeniably positive. With her first major international cover under her belt and a historic fashion show debut behind her, Bhavitha isn’t just an Indian model — she’s the new face of a shifting aesthetic. The model shares that her inbox is flooded with messages from the south Asian diaspora. Mothers are using her images to help their daughters embrace their natural skin tones, a shift Bhavitha finds more rewarding than the clothes she wears.
She says, “I’ve got so many emails from people who say my success feels like a personal win for them. There are mums who tell me they show their daughters my photo and it makes these little brown girls feel better about their skin tone.”
No turning back
As for what’s next? Don’t expect to see Bhavitha behind a desk anytime soon. While she acknowledges the ‘weird turns’ her life has taken, the allure of the high-fashion world has firmly taken hold: “Life has become so strange, there are so many plot twists and weird turns that I genuinely don’t know what the future holds. Although let’s be for real, after doing something so glamorous, travelling the world and everything else that comes with modelling, who can really go back to a nine-to-five?“
