Each year model Ashley Radjarame returns to her hometown of Puducherry to spend a holiday with her family. Until this Vogue India 15th anniversary cover story, the Parisian, born in Îlede-France in 1999, has never knowingly stepped into clothes made by Indian designers.

The model’s grandfather — father to Radjarame’s mother, Raji — was enrolled in the French military service and she inherited his citizenship, when the entire family migrated to the outskirts of Paris. Now I understand the French connection.

Ashley and her mother both burst into tears at the end of Nick Sethi’s fashion shoot. “In most shoots, you only care about what you look like and what the outfit looks like, but during this shoot it was also about being photographed in Puducherry —where I’m from, where my grandfather is from and where my family was born. It made me so proud,” she says of her emotional state post-shoot.