Padma Lakshmi

PFor the author, food expert and television presenter and producer, shooting the Pirelli Calendar is a dream come true

Back in the 1990s, before Padma Lakshmi became a best-selling author and host of Top Chef and Taste the Nation, she worked as a model in Europe and the United States.

Born in India before growing up in New York and then Los Angeles, Lakshmi was photographed by Helmut Newton and dubbed “India’s first supermodel”. But there was one job she had her eye on that proved elusive.

“I always wanted to do the Pirelli Calendar,” Lakshmi recalls. “Obviously, it’s what every model dreams of.”

She remembers one picture in particular of the model Eva Herzigová “that I thought was beautiful”, as well as many other “beautiful images”.

“Those images are so iconic. And, for many of us, they defined a certain kind of femininity that really was classic while also pushing the boundaries a little bit, but always super, super feminine.”

Time passed and Lakshmi “went on with my life”, forgetting about The Cal as she became a writer, television host and producer. “I just thought that ship had sailed,” she says. “And so, when they called me, I was very excited. Surprised, but happily surprised and very excited to do it. I was just honoured.”

Cal photographer Ethan James Green has collaborated with Lakshmi before - he shot a campaign for a lingerie line she worked on[1] - and she loves the purity of his approach.

“There’s a minimalism that leaves room for just the human body to be beautiful in and of itself,” she says. “There aren’t a lot of accoutrements… he likes to see who you really are. And so, all the times that I’ve shot with Ethan, I’ve felt very beautiful, but very much myself. Not objectified, but more exalted.”

Lakshmi, who hosted Top Chef from 2006 to 2023 and created the documentary series Taste the Nation in 2020, was named one of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in 2023.

As well as being the author of five books, she is an activist who campaigns for immigrants’ rights, women’s rights and food justice, as well as helping raise awareness of endometriosis.

What is your definition of beauty? What does beauty mean to you?

Beauty to me is anything that catches the eye. It’s something that makes you want to look at that person or that object. It’s many different things to many people. My definition of beauty is very broad and, even when someone is not classically beautiful, if they have something interesting in their face, if they have an intelligence in their eyes, I think that’s also very beautiful and seductive. It’s really attractive. It seduces the eye in a way.

Do you have a cinematic memory of beauty from art or culture?

It’s not maybe what you would consider as beautiful, but there’s a scene in the movie Sophie’s Choice where Meryl Streep is recounting something so painful and so sad. And it’s not what we would think of as a beautiful moment, but the camera pushes in close to her, slowly, slowly, and she just looks luminous. The camera loves her. And so, it’s a very sad moment in the movie, but it’s such a beautiful, loving portrait of this woman through the camera.

[Also] anything with Anouk Aimée. The camera just loved her. I think [film director François] Truffaut said, “Half of filmmaking is just finding a beautiful woman and pointing a camera at her”, you know?

Is there a smell that you associate with beauty?

It would smell like honeysuckle after a summer rain.

Padma Lakshmi Calendar Pirelli 2025 Interview

How about a sound?

It would be the sound of my child laughing.

A taste?

It would taste like chocolate, dark chocolate and cinnamon.

How do you approach nudity when modelling in our age and society after the MeToo movement?

It’s hard. I was modelling in the 1990s and it was much freer then. I think we’ve become much more conservative today. And some of that is good; a lot of the stuff that was happening in the 1990s needed to go away. But I don’t think that nudity is anything to be afraid of because I think a woman’s body is one of the most beautiful creations in nature.

It’s never what you do in the photograph. It’s how you do it. Anything can be vulgar, no matter how many clothes you have on. And you can also do it in a beautiful, meaningful, elegant way. It’s not nudity in and of itself that’s the problem, it’s how it’s manipulated by the subject and the photographer.