Akbar Shamji has the face fashion photographers have been chasing for a century, heavy brows over deep-set eyes and a long architectural line from cheekbone to jaw. Tom Ford saw it first at scale and made him the face of the brand’s spring-summer 2023 men’s campaign, then the face of Grey Vetiver later that year.

Steven Meisel shot him for Zara and for Dolce & Gabbana’s spring-summer 2023 campaign. By the end of that run Akbar was the British Indian man inside fashion’s most-photographed cluster, a tier his demographic has reached in small numbers.

The bookings since have followed the same pattern. Simon Holloway tapped him at Dunhill across the fall-winter 2024 chapters and the evening wear that closed the season. Ralph Lauren has done the same through Polo’s spring 2025 Hamptons campaign and the fragrance work alongside it.

Akbar keeps getting booked because the photographers who shoot him want to shoot him again. South Asian men remain a small group at the top of menswear, and his is the face the industry is now using to picture its modern man.