"It makes me very emotional every time I think about it.”
Indian model Bhavitha Mandava has landed on the March 2026 cover of British Vogue, adding to her fast-rising modelling career.
The cover shoot comes a couple of months after becoming the first Indian woman to open a Chanel show.
The 25-year-old opened Chanel’s Métiers d’Art 2026 show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
Bhavitha’s Chanel display came after she was discovered by chance in a New York City subway.
At the time, a video of her parents’ emotional reaction went viral. It propelled Bhavitha into global headlines.
Bhavitha, who has a master’s degree in assistive technology and human-computer interaction, has now cemented her place in fashion with her Vogue appearance.
Reflecting on the Chanel show, Bhavitha admitted that the scale of its impact only became clear afterwards.
She told British Vogue: “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.”
Despite this, her visibility has resonated strongly across the South Asian diaspora, revealing she has been flooded with supportive messages.
She said: “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.
“They are constantly telling me that this has healed them in ways that they can’t even explain. It makes me very emotional every time I think about it.”
For many families, her success represents validation long denied within mainstream beauty culture.
Going from graduate to high-profile fashion gigs has come quickly and before her fast rise, Bhavitha Mandava was planning to pursue a career in tech.
She acknowledged the unpredictability of her new life:
“Life has become so strange, there are so many plot twists and weird turns that I genuinely don’t know what the future holds.”
“Though 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 9 to 5?”
Bhavitha Mandava’s British Vogue cover positions her firmly within the upper ranks of fashion.
As conversations around diversity intensify, her presence signals an evolving aesthetic within luxury brands.
From viral daughter to Chanel trailblazer, Bhavitha Mandava’s rise appears to mark more than a fleeting moment.
It represents a recalibration of who is seen, celebrated and centred within global fashion.
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