In Pictures: India's Next Top Model

This post was originally written by ISP Spring '12 student Hannah Brown on her personal blog. Enjoy!

Jessica and Ashleigh workin' it. Can't you just hear Right Said Fred's "Too Sexy" playing in your head?

Tyra Banks would be proud. Well, probably not. The dresses we wore were not exactly top model designs. And the stage was not exactly spouting fire. But I was still a model.

Ashleigh (far left), Hannah (third from left), and Jessica (middle) pose in a lineup at the Festival of Arts and Culture Extravaganza (FACE) this past weekend.

The other week a girl stopped me and asked if I would be a model. There is a fashion design class at the college and a fashion show for a big state competition. So some other girls and myself were given dresses to try on.  These dresses were crazy! Its as if they put every style, fabric, design, and bling imaginable into every piece!

Jamie, Hannah, Ashleigh and Jessica practice their model faces.

If we had any idea what we were getting ourselves into we would not have agreed to take part in this show. The girls told us that we had practice every day from 8-5 which is insane! On Friday we showed up at 8 and of course since we are on Indian time they didn’t start practicing till after 9. So on Saturday we decided to be Indian and so showed up at 9 thinking that practice would be just about starting. Instead, they told us that it had just finished but would start again at 10:30. We live about a 20 minute walk from college so walking all the way back did not appeal to us. Instead we sat around and did a bit of homework. Then we showed up at exactly 10:30 and ended up sitting around until after 12 when we ran through our sequence once. We kept sitting there because we were told that practice was still going on. We found ourselves just sitting around doing nothing. It turned out that we were at school for 12 hours and literally practiced for 15 minutes! This is a prime example of India time.

A lineup of entries

Part of the problem was that whenever someone would give instructions, they would speak in Tamil so we never had any idea what was going on! Even the modeling coach would tell people where to walk and how to pose in Tamil!! Very difficult to know what we were supposed to be doing!

Hannah working the audience!

Anyways, the show went off without a hitch and was actually very fun.  The crowd was crazy and it was fun to have friends in the audience. Since I was appearing in two different sequences and dresses it was definitely a struggle to get changed in time and remember all the different moves. I’m glad that I’ve had this experience, but I’m so thankful it is over!

Jessica and the creator of her fashion show attire!

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Text and photos by Hannah Brown.