Dreams are always beautiful, but not always do they come true as we want them to. Sometimes they come true that we never even expected them to. But hard work and being consistent with what you are doing are bound to take you at least two steps closer to what you have been dreaming about all along. And more often than not, it’s not even that hard, but something as simple as planning your next step for the next week, month or year, or investing in a short course that you have been shelving for so long could go a long way. And this unexpected realisation of a dream is what happened with the InfluencEX Awards 2024 Emerging Fashion Creator of the Year (Female) award winner Jhanvi Bhatia.
Jhanvi Bhatia Part 1: It All Started With A Dream & A Lot of Passion
Although rooted in Rajasthan, Jhanvi Bhatia was actually brought up in the hustle and bustle of Mumbai– the City of Dreams. Just like every other child out there, little Jhanvi Bhatia had a dream to work in the world that gives her the utmost happiness, i.e., Fashion. Ever since she was a child, she loved anything and everything related to fashion, especially designing outfits. She recounts how she and her mother would design her outfits for her birthday and go on a shopping spree to find the right material for the outfit.
With her mother’s faith in her, Jhanvi Bhatia sought to make the dream that both she and her mother had of designing dresses a reality. Hence, she applied to all the best fashion schools in the country, but sadly, she didn’t get into her dream school. One would expect she would swallow the bitter pill of reality and move on from her starry dream. And she did for some time when she enrolled in a commerce course for a degree. But soon, the bitterness wore off and she realised that she couldn’t possibly give up on everything that she had ever dreamt of. And that’s when the seeds of content creator Jhanvi Bhatia that we know today started sprouting. She enrolled herself for a fashion design diploma and started creating content related to fashion on social media, all while getting a commerce degree.
Jhanvi Bhatia Part 2: Becoming The Dream
Keeping the promise she made to herself that she would get into content creation once she started her fashion diploma course, Jhanvi Bhatia started her journey as a content creator, but her dream was still not entirely fulfilled. Trying to figure out what to do and what not to do, it took a lot of patience, consistency and hard work for Jhanvi Bhatia to get where she is today. The lack of help and support on the internet on how to understand social media and unlock its true potential made it harder for Bhatia to figure it out all on her own.
But with consistent posting and sticking to a quote by Jeff Bezos that she quotes, “I think those who are patient about results and impatient about executions are the ones that make it big in life”, she made sure that her dream burned as brightly as her passion for it. And with a brand deal through Shoppers Stop, she decided to take the final plunge and go all in with content creation.
Taking her knowledge of marketing and commerce, she expanded on her love for fashion and carved a niche in personal styling as she realised how much she truly loves helping her audience feel confident and good about what they are wearing. Creative blocks are an inevitable part of content creation, and Jhanvi Bhatia found a way around it by just asking her audience what they truly needed from her. Looking at the downside of being a fashion influencer, she does raise concerns about the overconsumption that, as an influencer, you inevitably fall prey to, thanks to the overflowing PR packages from brands and the pressure to do things a certain way to sponsor a brand.
With time, as the followers increased steadily, so did the negative comments. There were times when Bhatia recollects she considered giving up on content creation entirely because of the perverted male gaze and moral policing in the comments and DMs that just got to her, even though she put up with it for a really long time. But eventually she decided to do what she came to do in the first place and grew an even thicker skin than the one she was born with.
This Is Just The Beginning
Reflecting on her journey so far, Bhatia recounts how overthinking tends to hinder our execution of creativity and hence expresses her glee in being able to reduce it to an extent. Furthermore, she mentions how important it is to be kind to one another on social media, given how cruel and toxic the space has become. Taking it as just the start of her long journey, Bhatia leaves the young dreamers with a message wherein she hopes that they believe in themselves and prove their love for something via actions and being consistent in what they are doing.
