A look at the first Indian model in history to open the Versace runway

New Delhi, Jan 17 The first Indian model in history to open the Versace runway, beating out the likes of Bella Hadid and Emily Ratajkowski, Avanti Nagrath makes her Vogue India cover debut with its Jan/Feb 2023 issue. Divya Bala meets the girl of the moment blazing a trail through the international fashion scene.

You're a model from Delhi in Milan for the first time, fresh out of your teens. You're somewhere in the sprawling, sumptuous headquarters of Versace, perhaps feeling a little out of your depth. You've made it through a room full of 70 other hopeful models and been approved by five gatekeepers of one of fashion's most storied luxury houses to be booked for your first international runway. A living legend-in this case, Donatella Versace-is overseeing your fitting, ensuring the precision tailoring of the sharply-cut black suit you are wearing lives up to the Versace standard. Suddenly, she flicks back her curtain of flaxen hair to look at you and, in her gravely Italian drawl says, "Do you know you're opening the show?"

It's the kind of fairy-tale story that model dreams are made of, one that is Avanti Nagrath's reality. However, the 21-year-old has trouble believing it, even almost a year on. It was then that she burst onto the international fashion scene, opening the Versace autumn/winter 2022-23 show at Milan Fashion Week on February 25.

"It still feels like a dream when I think about it-even while I was walking the show it felt like a dream. There were so many models around, it was Bella [Hadid]. It was Gigi [Hadid], and I'm the one opening the show?" Nagrath recalls, speaking from her home in Delhi, where she is taking a break before returning to the circuit in January. "I told myself, 'You can get intimidated by the big names, but just do what you do best and forget whatever else is around you.' And because I was the first girl out, I was like, 'If I don't go out, the whole show is going to stop.' So the second they said, 'Go!' I put blinders on and walked."

Born and bred in Delhi, growing up with her parents, her younger brother and her grandmother, Nagrath was a self-confessed "outdoor kid", a tomboy who enjoyed nothing more than playing sports. And when she wasn't on the basketball court, she was perpetually in front of the camera.

"My mum tells me that even when I was a kid, I loved taking photos. If there was a camera in front of me, I would pose for it. I still have pictures of myself doing the typical Bollywood pose-you know with your hip out, and your hand on your hip," she says, with a laugh. "And then at 14, my mum and I were sitting together and she asked, 'Why don't you try modelling?' I had always loved [modelling] and looked up to models like Bella Hadid, Emily Ratajkowski and Naomi Campbell, so I thought, why not? I took a few pictures and put it on social media and then a few agencies approached me."

With the support of her mother, Nagrath started modelling at 15, between classes at the Modern School Barakhamba and extracurricular duties as an avid basketballer.