You may not know her name, but you've probably seen her face. Madhulika Sharma has graced Vogue India and ELLE Magazine and modeled for popular brands such as Reformation and Skims. Cheddar's own Hena Doba spoke with Sharma to discuss her globe-spanning modeling career, her education in fashion history, and working alongside Kim Kardashian.

<div class="block">You may not know her name, but you&#39;ve probably seen her face. Madhulika Sharma has graced <i>Vogue India</i> and <i>ELLE Magazine</i> and modeled for popular brands such as Reformation and Skims. Cheddar&#39;s own Hena Doba spoke with Sharma to discuss her globe-spanning modeling career, her education in fashion history, and working alongside Kim Kardashian.</div>
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Wake Up With Cheddar

Walk and Talk With 'Fresh Face of Fashion' Madhulika Sharma

She is Grace Vogue India Elle magazine. She's worked for brands like reformation, even ski skims. But as I found out there's so much more to her than meets the eye. Take a look. I want to say it was very tough getting dressed today when you're interviewing someone who's been dubbed the Fresh Face of Fashion. But here I am today. Where in your hood by the New York Stock Exchange in New York City? I want to talk about your modeling career and what brought you here to New York in the first place I came to New York with just the ounce of faith that I wanted to explore my potential abroad. I was modeling in India alongside college and I just wanted to see what lied on the pond and I took the leap of faith. What's interesting is you had an opportunity to model when you were much younger, you declined it to pursue your education. Tell me about the degrees that you have. Oh, well, I have a degree in economics and in politics. Um I wanted to be a campaign writer, like I wanted to like pursue public policy full scale and I figured that modeling was a way for me to elevate my platform so that I could reach those eventual goals. And lo and behold, here I am today in New York City, working as an international model. Did you ever see yourself as an international model? No, I didn't know what the due sense of fashion were up until 18 when I nose dived into the deep end of the pool and I had to start doing fashion history, learn more about photographers, stylists, hair, makeup clothing brands. And I just found there to be such an amazing story and how these brands have scaled from, you know, start to scale. And so I think it's really a collaborative process that I'm so happy to be a part of. And you moved to New York City during the pandemic. Tell me about some of the campaigns that you've been a part of ever since. But I moved here when New York was goes down. I have since had the opportunity to be a part of multiple different campaigns. Skims was a noteworthy booking alongside Miss Kim Kardashian. I also have been a part of ad R beauty campaign, graph jewelry, Chanel designers like Sally Point, Derek Lim, Philip Lim. So it's just been an incredible journey. You have been dubbed The Fat Fresh Face of Fashion. What did you think when you got that very impressive title? It was obviously like a weight on my shoulders because I knew that fashion for me was a medium, was a platform to voice multiple other things that I'm interested in and for me to elevate other creatives like myself at the same time. So I took that as a responsibility and not just an honorary mention, we've already determined that you're beautiful, you're smart, but you're also using your platform for good. You personally only wear sustainable fashion. Why did you make that decision in your career? When I moved here very early on, I knew for a fact that I wanted to move away from fast fashion and work mostly with brands that are completely on the carbon efficient scale. And that was simply because I have been working with my mom since I was a teenager on an endeavor that's called the Yarn Foundation. And our mission is to be able to empower rural artisans in the northeast of India to produce hand loom and handicraft items. They're all died seasonally. They're made with fruits and vegetables and it is called a silk because the aren't killed in the process. So it's completely cruelty free. And my mom has been a pioneer of it for many, many years now and I joined forces with my mom to be able to limit fast fashion. And that's one of my little steps to make better changes. I don't have to tell you this, but modeling has changed so much in 30 to 40 years. Do you think there's still room for improvement? Absolutely. And I was obviously of the opinion that, oh, we've done a lot towards diversity and, you know, I'm happy with the inclusivity that we're seeing. But as I immerse myself in more and more statistical data, I find that the decline of using people of different ethnicities has honestly risen and size is too, sizes, too, has honestly risen. And that's because trends are dictated by the two thousands now and by the 19 nineties and the late nineties and two thousands, as we know, were emphasized as highly, you know, body dysmorphic periods. And so there has been a rise of that again, which is worrisome, but I'm hopeful that with more and more people advocating for change, we can see something momentous come up. Thanks again to for chatting with us. She is so cool political degree, economics degree from overseas. And like I mentioned, she was offered to be a worldwide model years ago, but she wanted to finish her degree so she could do more with her platform. By the way, she moved here during the pandemic, which is already stressful from another country to New York City. And that's her career just turned and also the sustainability aspect. I'm glad you mentioned the fact that she only wears clothes that are sustainable clearly, those are issues that resonate with so many people. And it's good to sort of see that heightened from, from basically a super model