Actor and Miss Universe 2021 Harnaaz Sandhu has been in the limelight from a very young age. Being an international pageant titleholder, she has had eyes on her fashion sense since she was just 21, and she credits her sense of fashion to her mother.
“I am going to give the maximum credit for my fashion sense to my mum. I was always fascinated with her beautiful suits. That was the only fashion I was fascinated by. But the tables have turned as now I’m the one telling my mum what kind of suits she should wear. I have taken that torch and it’s beautiful. I feel a little prouder and give a pat on my back when people around me, my friends and everybody ask me for fashion tips,” she says.
Winning the Miss Universe title helped Harnaaz Sandhu get an insight into the sense of fashion globally, and she took full advantage of the situation. “When I won Miss Universe, I had the opportunity to be around incredible designers from India and globally. When I went to New York, it changed me into a whole new person. New York did teach me a lot about fashion. I was very happy to see a huge change in my taste and understanding of how to use colours or accessorising. The Punjabi girl now had an international understanding of fashion,” she gushes.
Harnaaz was just 21 when she won the global pageant and she admits it’s been a journey learning to deal with the public scrutiny it comes with. She says, “It was quite a shocker suddenly having all eyes on me from around the world. Within India, there were a lot of expectations from me, and winning at 21, I didn’t expect so much to happen. But it was beautiful and I had a wonderful journey. That was the starting point of my career, and since then, I’ve made sure whatever I can do to inspire people, I do that.”
Ask her how she evolved into that journey and she recounts, “In the beginning, it was very chaotic. I was just trying to understand what just happened. I was fortunate enough to have a lovely family and incredible friends who always supported me. I was just in the right bubble with the right people. I was just patient, and I never stopped believing in myself. I won as a girl and by the time I passed my crown, I became a woman. I learned so much from different people around the world, I just followed my principles, what I felt from my heart and that related with people.”
Quite confident in her own self now, Harnaaz admits, “I am going to write the story of my life and nobody’s going to tell me what to do. As soon as you realise that, you start just enjoying life and be easy on your self. You start taking wild decisions and then you don’t repent even if you don’t succeed in them. I gave that freedom to myself because I knew waqt hamesha badal jayega.”