Bhumika Arora is one of the definite break-out new faces this season. The hitherto unknown 27-year-old from a small town in India started with Alexander Wang and Marc Jacobs in New York, and followed it up with Gareth Pugh, Bottega Veneta, and Fendi.<\/p>\n
With interviews with Bhumika and her team at The Society, Ray A. Smith constructs a thorough analysis of the strategy behind her success for The Wall Street Journal.<\/p>\n
Here are our highlights:<\/p>\n
Many models walk at fashion week. Only some make a name for themselves. Ms. Arora\u2019s New York-based agency, the Society Management, has been preparing for months to get Ms. Arora noticed by influential casting directors, fashion stylists, and other industry taste makers.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s really important to lay the groundwork,\u201d says her New York agent, Christopher Michael. \u201cOnce you\u2019ve built that, you can move on to the other arms of her career.\u201d
\nGrowing up in a small town in the state of Haryana, Ms. Arora was a tall, skinny girl. While some people teased her for looking \u201clike a guy,\u201d she says, others said she looked like a model. Ms. Arora sometimes started to watch fashion shows but then changed the channel. \u201cI used to think I was really, really ugly,\u201d she says. \u201cSo modeling couldn\u2019t be my thing.\u201d In her town\u2019s conservative culture, nice girls weren\u2019t models. Her parents objected any time she brought up the idea.
\nAfter she moved to a bigger town, Chandigarh, for college, she indulged her modeling fantasies through selfies. A friend submitted pictures of her to the \u201cModel Watch\u201d feature of a publication called \u201cCafe Beat\u201d distributed at a local caf\u00e9. Ms. Arora was surprised to hear a few months later that the magazine had published her photo, placing it alongside three other young people it dubbed \u201csteaming hot.\u201d That convinced her\u2014and helped convince her parents\u2014that she could try modeling.
\nMs. Arora started to pursue an M.B.A., but soon a photographer who had seen the published picture offered to take her first professional photos. Armed with those, she moved to Delhi and modeled there for a few years. She began sending out her pictures to agencies in Europe, including Elite Paris, in December 2013. The agency signed her soon after. Both Elite Paris and the Society Management are part of Elite World, a global network of agencies.
\nA team at the agency that includes Mr. Michael, the Society Management\u2019s executive agent, helps Ms. Arora and other models with personal development, including finding a personal style and dressing for castings. The team also advises her on things like traveling around cities. They also guide her and other models on social-media activity. Ms. Arora currently has a relatively small presence on social media, with an Instagram account that lists nearly 1,700 followers and 63 posts. The agency hopes to increase her interaction with her audience.<\/p>\n
While she was in Paris last February, Ms. Arora didn\u2019t have a visa that would allow her to work in the U.S. But her agency was laying the groundwork for a future move. It introduced her to Anita Bitton, a well-known U.S.-based runway casting director who was in Paris. \u201cWe kept her on our radar of people we like,\u201d Ms. Bitton says. The agency regularly updated Ms. Bitton\u2014and it let her know when the model obtained her U.S. visa.
\nAs the fall 2015 runway shows approached, the agency\u2019s first big step was targeting a few big, high-impact shows for Ms. Arora. For her first New York Fashion Week, \u201cwe didn\u2019t want to have an anticlimactic start,\u201d said Mr. Michael. \u201cWe were really quite targeted in terms of where we wanted to begin with her in terms of our shows and where her first appearance would land.\u201d
\nMs. Arora started New York Fashion Week with a bang, making her runway debut at Alexander Wang\u2019s show, one of the week\u2019s must-see events. The casting director was Ms. Bitton. Ms. Bitton\u2019s team requested that Ms. Arora not appear on any other runway before the show, which took place Feb. 14, two days after fashion week started. Ms. Bitton says the show had \u201ca very strong point of view and one that Bhumika was a very key part of. We wanted to preserve that moment until she had walked our show.\u201d Mr. Wang, the designer, says: \u201cShe exemplifies a unique look and I was immediately persuaded by her.\u201d
\nMs. Arora\u2019s appearance in that show sparked interest from other casting directors, Mr. Michael said. Three days later, Ms. Arora walked in Vera Wang\u2019s show. Vogue.com singled her out as No. 3 in its \u201c7 Things We Loved Today\u201d feature, writing: \u201cOur hearts were stolen by a fresh face on the Vera Wang runway: the moody-eyed, sultry-lipped, and enviously angular Bhumika.\u201d
\nMs. Arora then walked on Anna Sui\u2019s runway and closed out New York at Marc Jacobs, one of the most sought-after shows for a model. Ms. Bitton, the founder of New York City-based Establishment Casting, cast her for that show as well.
\nMr. Michael had sent Ms. Arora\u2019s model show card\u2014which features her picture and details such as height and shoe size\u2014to stylist Charlotte Stockdale while Ms. Stockdale was in New York. \u201cShe just blew me away,\u201d says Ms. Stockdale, who styled the Fendi show and played a role in choosing models, in collaboration with the show\u2019s casting agent.
\nAfter the show season ends, Mr. Michael hopes for Ms. Arora to make \u201dan impressive splash\u201d in magazines and ad campaigns in the coming months. Mr. Michael, who is in Paris, meeting clients and supporting the models there, says several of the shows Ms. Arora walked in provided \u201ca stamp of validation.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Bhumika Arora is one of the definite break-out new faces this season. The hitherto unknown 27-year-old from a small town in India started with Alexander Wang and Marc Jacobs in New York, and followed it up with Gareth Pugh, Bottega Veneta, and Fendi. With interviews with Bhumika and her team at The Society, Ray A. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":10608,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1032,1030,491,1021,952,1023,1034,1035,825,1025,795,1026,1027,1033,1028,1022,483,997,1031,1024,508,516,482,812,583,1029],"class_list":["post-10606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-alexander-wang","tag-anita-bitton","tag-asia","tag-bhumika-arora","tag-career-moves","tag-catwalkers","tag-charlotte-stockdale","tag-christopher-michael","tag-culture","tag-delhi","tag-education","tag-elite-paris","tag-elite-world","tag-establishment-casting","tag-india","tag-indian-model","tag-instagram","tag-interview","tag-management","tag-mba","tag-models-of-colour","tag-runway","tag-social-media","tag-strategy","tag-the-society","tag-visa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/map.model.world\/directory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/map.model.world\/directory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/map.model.world\/directory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/map.model.world\/directory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/map.model.world\/directory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10606"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/map.model.world\/directory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10606\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10609,"href":"https:\/\/map.model.world\/directory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10606\/revisions\/10609"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/map.model.world\/directory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/map.model.world\/directory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/map.model.world\/directory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/map.model.world\/directory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}