A video of a fashion shoot in India has gone viral and unexpectedly turned a group of underprivileged school children into local celebrities. The footage shows the children, most of them girls between the ages of 12 and 17, dressed in red and gold outfits fashioned from discarded clothes. The teenagers designed and tailored the outfits and also doubled up as models to showcase their creations, with the grubby walls and terraces of the slum providing the backdrop for their ramp walk.
The video was filmed and edited by a 15-year-old boy. The video first appeared earlier this month on the Instagram page of Innovation for Change, a non-governmental organisation (NGO) in the city of Lucknow. The charity works with about 400 children from the city's slums, providing them free food, education and job skills.
The children featured in the shoot are students of this NGO. Mehak Kannojia, one of the models in the video, told the BBC that she and her fellow students closely followed the sartorial choices of Bollywood actresses on Instagram and often duplicated some of their outfits for themselves. "This time, we decided to pool our resources and worked as a group," the 16-year-old said.
For their project, they chose wisely - a campaign by Sabyasachi Mukherjee, one of India's top fashion designers who has dressed Bollywood celebrities, Hollywood actresses and billionaires. In 2018, Kim Kardashian wore his for a Vogue shoot. Mukherjee is also known as the "king of weddings" in India.
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