Jeenu Mahadevan was riding the bus home from school in Oslo in 2016 when Ida Falck Øien, one third of the design team behind Norwegian label Haikw, stopped him and asked if he modeled. He walked his first season at Paris Fashion Week spring-summer 2018, showing for Hermès, Alexander McQueen, Burberry, and Etro.

Editorial work followed inside a year, with Tim Walker, Ethan James Green, and Paolo Roversi among the photographers who put him in front of the camera for L’Uomo Vogue, GQ France, and Vogue Hommes. Jeenu stepped onto those pages and runways as one of a small number of South Asian men working at the top of European menswear, and the houses that cast him kept returning.

Ralph Lauren has kept Jeenu in rotation longer than any other house, casting him across campaign after campaign for the American brand while BOSS, Dolce & Gabbana, Brioni, Fendi, and Jacquemus have each cast him in campaigns of their own.

South Asian men have made up a small fraction of the faces fashion’s biggest houses put in front of a camera, and a run across labels like these remains rare for a model with his background.

Jeenu has talked openly about the assumptions that come with being one of the few, the requests to perform an idea of India instead of himself. He has answered by staying who he actually is in front of the camera, and by giving young South Asian men a working model near the top of menswear who looks like them.