Burberry enlists first Indian model Neelam Gill as its new beauty muse
The Indian-looking model has featured on the British luxury brand fashion and beauty campaigns after her catwalk debut last year
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Your support makes all the difference.Burberry has fully immersed its first Indian model Neelam Gill by hiring her to front its beauty campaign, as well as its fashion adverts.
Nineteen-year-model Neelam Gill, who changed her second name from Johal, made her catwalk debut last September for Burberry’s spring/summer 14 fashion show, one of the biggest and widely attended events during London Fashion Week.
Her first campaign for the British luxury label was unveiled in February, but the brand has now released her debut beauty advert.
She shared a photo on her Instagram account of the campaign in which she says: "Honoured to be the first ever Indian model used in a #BurberryBeauty campaign. Thank you @Burberry for always believing in me and embracing diversity!"
Gill joins the likes of British models of the moment Cara Delevingne and Edie Campbell, and Jourdan Dunn.
She told Teen Vogue: "Fashion reaches all different ethnicities, and the market is so wide now that customers truly aren't going to be just one skin tone.
"I'm really happy that I'm working for a company that embraces diversity, especially because Burberry's a British brand and they realise that being British doesn't just mean being white."
Gill is a young British woman of Indian origin from Coventry who hadn’t ever been on a runway. She told Paper Mag: “I practiced literally every day after I got cast. I would go out to my garden in these Burberry shoes and get my mom to record me on my iPhone."
Her career plans were getting into college to study psychology after she successfully finished her A-levels, but that suddenly changed after her prestigious catwalk debut.
Following her appearance for the British luxury brand, she has appeared in major fashion editorials for publications like Vogue Italia. She could potentially follow the footsteps of international Indian supermodels Lakshmi Menon and Ujjwala Raut.
Burberry's international campaigns are plastered on billboards and pages of glossy magazines worldwide, from New York to Tokyo. New British model Gill appears on them wearing the iconic trench coat. “The first time I saw the campaign, I went with my best friend to the Knightsbridge store, the Bond Street store and the flagship on Regent Street [in London]," she said to Paper Mag. "We took so many pictures of it because I wanted to treasure it forever. It's so surreal."
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