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Three decades after she first entered the spotlight as a model, Lara Dutta is now raising necessary questions about India’s modelling industry. Reflecting on her own journey — from signing contracts alone at 16 to building a career across fashion, films and entrepreneurship — she says models still lack protection, structure and representation. Calling the industry “the wild wild west” in her early years, she believes models today need stronger voices, better safeguards, and even a union to protect their interests.


‘ I was a 16-year-old who looked at my own contract. I had no lawyers’Lara Dutta hails from an era of modelling, when supermodels were a rage. However, the sector, she thought was disorganised. “For us, it was a lot more disorganised. We never had agencies and agents. We never had anyone looking out for us or watching our backs. It was literally like you were in the wild, wild west,” she recalls, adding, “I was a 16-year-old who looked at my own contract that came to me by a multi-million dollar conglomerate across the globe. I had no lawyers or agents reading the fine print for me. And I think we learned how to navigate our way through this industry on our own. It just made us tougher and savvier.”

‘ Models need more voice, they n eed to be their own person’

She feels the industry now has more structure, but also more pressure, while she raises a pertinent question. “Today, a lot of times, the models are at the mercy of agencies. If you want this job, this is what you’re getting paid, and this is what the environment is going to be. It’s up to you whether you want to do it or not. You are, in a way, thrown off the deep end,” she says.