Last week, as fashion fans watched model Bhavitha Mandava open Chanel’s 2025 Métiers d’art show —staged on a New York City subway platform—they had no idea just how accidentally appropriate the setting was. Why? Because, as fashion lore has it, the New York City subway is where the 25-year-old graduate student once caught the eye of a fellow passenger–a fellow passenger who just so happened to be Matthieu Blazy , who was then creative director at Bottega Veneta.

Mandava walking in Chanel’s 2025 Métiers d’art show in New York. Courtesy of CHANEL

Mandava hails from India, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in architecture before moving to New York to pursue a master’s in interactive design and media at NYU. Fate, it seems, had other plans. After that chance encounter on public trans

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