From Perine Fernando to Elina Gunawardena: Sri Lanka’s Runway Story Goes Global Again

Perine Fernando’s story almost reads like a fashion film now. She was 15 when her family moved to Switzerland during a difficult period in their lives, as her father sought medical treatment. She had never even travelled by plane before. Yet somewhere inside that upheaval remained a dream she had carried for years: she wanted to model.

There was no carefully manufactured social-media launch. Her sister photographed her in jeans and a simple T-shirt, without makeup, and the pictures were sent to an agency in Zurich. They liked what they saw. Catalogues and advertising work followed, and Perine began learning the practical craft of modelling before Paris eventually called.

Her international modelling story became extraordinary. Perine recalled doing as many as 17 shows during a single Paris Fashion Week, sometimes being rushed between venues on the back of a motorbike. Through the 1980s and 1990s, her runway work included houses such as Dior, Armani, Yves Saint Laurent, Nina Ricci, Pierre Cardin, Ungaro and Lagerfeld, while her face also appeared on magazine covers including Cosmopolitan and Vogue.

Perhaps the most beautiful part of Perine’s story is not the list of designers. It is how openly she spoke about being Sri Lankan at a time when South Asian representation in international fashion looked very different from today.

She said she told people she was Sri Lankan with pride, and her agents recognised that her background was part of what made her distinctive. Fashion used the word “exotic” much more casually in those decades, and Perine herself remembered an era when designers actively searched for faces they had not seen before. It was a complicated language, but there was also something powerful in a young woman from Sri Lanka understanding that she did not have to erase where she came from in order to belong in Paris.

She also admitted something we rarely associate with supermodels: she was shy. For years she lacked confidence and felt that the woman walking the runway was almost another version of herself. That honesty makes the glamour more interesting. The confidence we remember in photographs was something she had to learn.

Elina Gunawardena’s world could hardly be more different. She grew up watching major fashion shows online and followed models such as Bella Hadid, Alex Consani and Adriana Lima. Her sister Mayline’s involvement in modelling also brought the industry closer to home, and Elina joined Panthera Management in Sri Lanka in 2021 when she was only 14.

She has spoken openly about not immediately knowing what she was doing and even struggling to walk in heels in the beginning. Her first major local show came at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Sri Lanka in 2022, followed by appearances at Colombo Fashion Week. Then came the moment that changed the scale of everything: an interview with Ford Models Paris in February 2025. She signed the following day and was almost immediately heading into Paris Fashion Week.

What followed was not one lucky booking. Elina began building a serious high-fashion runway career.

Elina’s international fashion record now includes names such as Chanel, Hermès, Fendi, Givenchy, McQueen, Isabel Marant, Dolce & Gabbana and Simone Rocha. She has also appeared in major editorial work and reached another traditional fashion milestone with a Vogue Netherlands cover. Today she is represented internationally through Ford Models Paris, Storm Management in London and The Lions in New York.

Then came September 2026. Elina opened Ralph Lauren’s Spring/Summer 2027 show in New York, a position that carries its own importance in runway casting because the opening model sets the first visual impression of the entire collection.

A month later came the moment that travelled quickly across Sri Lankan social media. On 18 October, Elina walked the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show in Los Angeles, becoming the first Sri Lankan model reported to appear on its runway. She was sharing the show with some of the most recognisable models in contemporary fashion, but for Sri Lankan audiences there was only one face everyone was searching for.

Perine and Elina belong to two very different versions of the modelling industry. Perine worked during the great supermodel era, when individual runway personalities could become almost as famous as the designers they walked for. Elina belongs to an industry that moves at digital speed, where runway images circulate globally within minutes and a young model may move between New York, London, Milan and Paris while audiences follow almost every step online.

Yet there is a striking similarity between them. Neither woman arrived from one of fashion’s traditional modelling capitals. Both began very young, learned the profession while doing it and entered international spaces where Sri Lankan faces were still unusual.

That matters because representation is not simply about celebrating a flag beside a model’s name. It changes what younger women can imagine. A Sri Lankan teenager watching Elina today does not have to wonder quite as abstractly whether somebody from this island can walk for Hermès, open Ralph Lauren or appear in a Victoria’s Secret show. She has seen it happen.

It would be too easy to draw a perfectly straight line between the two women and say one directly created the career of the other. Fashion history is rarely that neat. But Perine showed decades ago that Sri Lankan identity and international high fashion were not incompatible, even when the route between Colombo and Paris seemed impossibly long.

Elina is now taking that idea into another generation. Her career is still young, which may be the most exciting part of the story. Victoria’s Secret is a milestone, not the ending, and her runway work with some of fashion’s most influential houses suggests that the real story is much broader than one headline-making appearance.

For Satyn, these are the women worth remembering together. Perine Fernando walked when very few Sri Lankan girls could see someone like themselves in that world. Elina Gunawardena walks at a time when thousands can watch her almost instantly from their phones.

The runways have changed. Fashion has changed. The way we discover models has changed completely. But every so often, a Sri Lankan woman steps onto an international runway and reminds us that she was never out of place there.