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PHOTO COURTESY: VOGUE INDIA

Cover girl Lakshmi Menon

Bangalore girl Lakshmi Menon comes blessed with all the traditional south Indian good looks. Her tall lanky frame perhaps sets her apart from that archetype.

This season is at Lakshmi’s feet. Vogue India hits the stands this April with Lakshmi on the cover page. Iridescent bikini, oh-so-long faux ponytail, retro shades, a dash of colourful glass bangles and all, Lakshmi is the sultry beach goddess who’s risen from the seas off Thailand’s Koh Kood Island and into lensman Prabuddha Dasgupta’s view for the ‘Summer High’ feature of the magazine. The new face of Hermes, the legendary century-old Parisian fashion house, Lakshmi also features in a series of ad campaigns for Hermes with, what else, but elephants, with paint all over them, even toe-nails!

Hail the ever-exotic mythical Indian obsessed over in the wild wild west. Lakshmi sighs as she admits: “Unfortunately yes! That’s the sad part that they want to keep the myth of India being the land of elephants, and colourful women with pots on their heads intact. They are not comfortable with the new India emerging…the multicultural and global India,” she says talking of the unchanging image of the country in foreign media. But the 25-year-old doesn’t see herself in that mould. “I look at myself as any other model. But yes, sometimes I’m looked upon as an exotic thing that’s landed on their shores,” says, before continuing how there are many African-Americans and Brazilians on the ramp who make the same mark.

Having studied in Bangalore’s Jyothi Nivas College, she made a quiet entry on to the ramps of Paris.

So is it a big thing being on Vogue’s cover? “I believe it is now, isn’t it? You tell me,” she laughs. “It’s considered the fashion bible by the urban Indian woman.” Ask her about the worst part of doing a swimsuit shoot and she says “You need to make sure your body is in good shape because it’s as good as wearing underwear…the whole politics of the body come into play. ” she laughs.

But hasn’t she been under the scanner for being rather lean, after the fashion industry set certain standards for models after the ramp deaths?

“My BMI is pretty decent. I’ve never made an effort to look thin. My genetic pool is skinny.”

She’s finished her first season in New York and is going back for the haute couture season. As for moving to Goa, she says: “It was becoming difficult to live in a crowded city and do grocery shopping without being stuck in a traffic jam!”

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