I CONTACT
A student in first person
Tejeshwar Singh, Fashion Business Management ’24
Tell us about your experience with modeling. And what’s next for you?
Being young and heavily influenced by media, I found it discouraging not seeing people who looked like me on the big screen and in fashion. I also found it very annoying to see Indian people misrepresented in media. For example, on the Disney Channel, we’d often see Indian people represented as nerdy, weird kids with thick accents and lizards as pets. It was a big goal of mine to help depict South Asians properly.
I began making YouTube videos and posting outfits on Instagram, and Nike reached out to me to take part in their holiday 2021 Tech Pack Collection campaign and lookbook. This was a dream come true, as I’ve always been obsessed with the swoosh brand, and it was the first time a turban-wearing Sikh has modeled for Nike. A week later, independent of that, Converse asked me to be in their holiday 2021 campaign, and I became the first turban-wearing Sikh to model for Converse as well.
In September, I walked in Vogue‘s first-of-its-kind, globally live-streamed fashion show, Vogue World, alongside Serena Williams, Kendall Jenner, Lil Nas X, and Bella and Gigi Hadid. Most recently, I was featured in Nike’s fall 2022 collegiate campaign.
People always ask me what’s next, and I am anxious for the answer. I hope to continue to make history, work on projects with the greatest companies, build an even larger audience, and develop a brand of my own.
