Bhumika Arora, a runway model from Karnal, India, is having a breakout season.
The 27-year-old has walked the runways in New York, London, and Milan in recent weeks. She has landed some big gigs including Alexander Wang and Marc Jacobs in New York, Gareth Pugh in London, and Bottega Veneta and Salvatore Ferragamo in Milan. She is expected to be in a few shows at Paris fashion week, which is going on now.
Many models walk at fashion week. Only some make a name for themselves. Ms. Arora’s 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.
“It’s really important to lay the groundwork,” says her New York agent, Christopher Michael. “Once you’ve built that, you can move on to the other arms of her career.” The agency was behind the 2014 push for Kendall Jenner of the Kardashian clan to be taken seriously as a high-fashion model.
“I want to make a name for myself by doing good work,” says Ms. Arora. “No matter how much hard work I have to do, I will do that and hope for the best.”
In recent seasons, many influential shows have been mixing up their lineups to sprinkle in more models who have a distinctive look or carry themselves in a striking way, rather than being interchangeable blank slates for the clothing.
Ms. Arora’s arrival comes as the industry continues to try to address criticism that there still aren’t enough women of color on the catwalks. When it comes to diversity, the conversation usually focuses on adding more black models or models from China. While there may be a few working models of Indian descent, a model born and raised in India is very rare.
Growing up in a small town in the state of Haryana, Ms. Arora was a tall, skinny girl. While some people teased her for looking “like a guy,” she says, others said she looked like a model. Ms. Arora sometimes started to watch fashion shows but then changed the channel. “I used to think I was really, really ugly,” she says. “So modeling couldn’t be my thing.” In her town’s conservative culture, nice girls weren’t models. Her parents objected any time she brought up the idea.
After she moved to a bigger town, Chandigarh, for college, she indulged her modeling fantasies through selfies. A friend submitted pictures of her to the “Model Watch” feature of a publication called “Cafe Beat” distributed at a local café. 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 “steaming hot.” That convinced her—and helped convince her parents—that she could try modeling.
Ms. 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. The following February, Ms. Arora walked her first runway show in Paris, for Dries Van Noten.
Ms. Arora’s determination appealed to Mr. Michael of the Society Management. He also cited her work ethic, eagerness for feedback—good or bad—and her journey from India.
A team at the agency that includes Mr. Michael, the Society Management’s 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.
While she was in Paris last February, Ms. Arora didn’t 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. “We kept her on our radar of people we like,” Ms. Bitton says. The agency regularly updated Ms. Bitton—and it let her know when the model obtained her U.S. visa.
As the fall 2015 runway shows approached, the agency’s first big step was targeting a few big, high-impact shows for Ms. Arora. For her first New York Fashion Week, “we didn’t want to have an anticlimactic start,” said Mr. Michael. “We 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.”
Ms. Arora started New York Fashion Week with a bang, making her runway debut at Alexander Wang’s show, one of the week’s must-see events. The casting director was Ms. Bitton.
Ms. Bitton’s 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 “a 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.”
Mr. Wang, the designer, says: “She exemplifies a unique look and I was immediately persuaded by her.”
The usually earnest Ms. Arora says she jumped excitedly when she learned she had landed the Alexander Wang show. “I actually had a little tear in my eye,” she says. “That was such an amazing moment for me.” After the show, she says, she “actually ran” from the show back to her agency’s office. “They were so happy, they all congratulated me. They all hugged me.”
Ms. Arora’s appearance in that show sparked interest from other casting directors, Mr. Michael said. Three days later, Ms. Arora walked in Vera Wang’s show. Vogue.com singled her out as No. 3 in its “7 Things We Loved Today” feature, writing: “Our hearts were stolen by a fresh face on the Vera Wang runway: the moody-eyed, sultry-lipped, and enviously angular Bhumika.”
Ms. Arora then walked on Anna Sui’s 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.
The next stop was London, where Ms. Arora appeared in shows for Daks, Gareth Pugh, Jonathan Saunders, Preen and Simone Rocha before heading to Milan, where she landed a coveted spot in the Fendi show, walking for Karl Lagerfeld.
Mr. Michael had sent Ms. Arora’s model show card—which features her picture and details such as height and shoe size—to stylist Charlotte Stockdale while Ms. Stockdale was in New York.
“She just blew me away,” says Ms. Stockdale, who styled the Fendi show and played a role in choosing models, in collaboration with the show’s casting agent. “She looks different from everyone else. She’s new-looking. Somehow she’s kind of powerful-looking but sensual at the same time. Her face is kind of classical beauty but then she’s not a classical beauty. At the same time she also has an incredibly sweet personality, which really helps.” Ms. Stockdale says she put Ms. Arora in one of her favorite outfits for the Fendi show.
After Fendi, Ms. Arora walked in six more shows, including Roberto Cavalli, Emilio Pucci and Missoni.
After the show season ends, Mr. Michael hopes for Ms. Arora to make ”an impressive splash” 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 “a stamp of validation.”
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