4 min readFeb 21, 2026 01:15 PM IST
First published on: Feb 21, 2026 at 01:15 PM IST
When the March 2026 cover of British Vogue featured Indian model Bhavitha Mandava, the response was immediate and celebratory. But this is not primarily a diversity story. It is a question of authority. For much of the 20th century, fashion functioned as one of the West’s most subtle instruments of cultural power. Even after the end of the Empire, aesthetic hierarchies remained intact. London, Paris and New York defined what modernity looked like; the rest of the world measured itself against that template. To appear on an international cover was to be validated by an external centre of taste.
The hierarchy was rarely explicit, but it was persistent. Western bodies symbolised universality. Non-Western bodies were often styled as heritage, introduced as diversity, positioned as departures from the norm. Difference required explanation.
What is striking about this cover is the absence of that explanation. Mandava is not presented as an emblem of Indianness. There is no cultural framing designed to reassure readers that something “global” is being celebrated. She appears simply as the season’s mood — contemporary, confident, unqualified. That is the shift.
Cultural authority changes when what was once peripheral becomes ordinary. When difference no longer requires contextualisation, it suggests that the centre itself is expanding. This expansion mirrors broader economic realities. India is among the fastest-growing luxury markets in the world. It remains foundational to global textile and garment supply chains. Its young, digitally fluent consumers participate in global trend cycles increasingly as creators and amplifiers.
Economic weight inevitably reshapes symbolic power. For decades, India’s place in global fashion was structurally asymmetric. We cultivated the cotton, wove the fabric, stitched the garments. Our labour sustained global margins. Yet, the image of aspiration — the face that signified spring, modernity, desirability — was seldom ours.
That imbalance is narrowing. As markets diversify and growth disperses beyond traditional centres, industries adjust their narratives accordingly. Visual authority follows capital, demographic momentum and cultural confidence. But representation alone does not equal ownership.
If India is to claim a share in shaping the global gaze, it must move beyond visibility toward agency. Who controls fashion narratives? Who owns intellectual property? Who captures value across the supply chain? Who sets the sustainability standards that increasingly define the industry’s future?
For too long, India has exported labour while importing aspiration. We trained designers who sought recognition abroad. We consumed global fashion imagery that rarely resembled us. Even our domestic institutions often mirrored Western aesthetic benchmarks rather than contesting them. The external gaze was gradually internalised. That internalisation may now be loosening.
Yet this moment should invite introspection as much as pride. Symbolic presence on international platforms will matter little if domestic creative ecosystems remain underfunded, if artisans remain economically vulnerable, if value addition continues to accrue elsewhere.
Fashion may appear trivial beside geopolitics. It is not. It encodes hierarchy long before policy debates catch upIt tells societies who looks like the future. A magazine cover cannot dismantle inequality. But it can reveal where influence is migrating.
The appearance of an Indian face on a British cover is not, by itself, revolutionary. Its significance lies in what it acknowledges: That aesthetic authority is no longer singular and that aspiration is becoming multipolar.
Who owns the global gaze? Increasingly, no single nation does. And in that diffusion of authority lies a profound reordering — not just of fashion, but of how the world imagines power itself.
The writer is associate professor and programme coordinator for fashion design at IILM University, Gurugram
