The Sardar Is A Star
- by J. Singh
It’s a snow-struck New York evening in late February and amidst the fast-falling crystals, a handsome male model on a 20-foot-tall billboard looks down at the shoppers. He is in black and grey, the “it” colours of the current season. On his feet are grey suede shoes and his jacket perfectly matches his black turban.

That’s right. Sonny Caberwal, one of the primary faces of Kenneth Cole this season, is “a practising Sikh,” as the promotional campaign boldly proclaims. He has been launched with great fanfare in television ads, a print ad campaign that will appear in In Style, Vogue and Vanity Fair, among others, and on the billboard over Kenneth Cole’s flagship store.

Two years ago, Caberwal started Tavalon, a New York City-based tea bar with his friend, John-Paul Lee. The New York Times called it “sleekly designed” and the New York Post said that this was “definitely not your grandmother’s tea lounge.”

It has an in-house DJ, a professional tea sommelier and offers a carefully chosen and exhaustive selection of tea. It even draws on Caberwal’s Indian heritage: There’s a kama chai sutra with a “secret blend of Indian spices.”
The story of how he came to be one of the 11 faces of Kenneth Cole’s “We all walk in different shoes” campaign is intriguing. In order to find the right Sikh face, Jennifer Starr, a New York casting agent, sent out a request to Amardeep Singh of the Sikh Coalition. She asked that he get the word out that she was looking for a Sikh model. The next day, she received so many pictures that her inbox was completely overwhelmed.

In a comment to the Sikh News Network, Caberwal said of the campaign, in which he speaks out against the racial profiling of Sikhs in the aftermath of 9/11: “I’m not making claims of being a role model. I am proud of Sikh traditions and Sikh history, and proud to carry them into the future.”

On Kenneth Cole’s online blog in late February, Cabeerwal was given the opportunity to editorialize. He wrote: “At least 75 per cent of Sikh children in Queens, New York, reported some form of harassment due to their religious identity, according to the Sikh Coalition. Over 40 per cent of these children have suffered physical violence because of their appearance, and even when reported to school administration, one-third receive no help whatsoever from school administrators. Nearly all of these children report receiving this abuse because they’ve been misidentified by their attackers as terrorists. One child, a six-year-old Sikh born in the United States, reports that kids in school have nicknamed him ‘enemy’ because, to them, he ‘looks like the enemy.’ Unfortunately, this type of treatment is not isolated, and is reported by young Sikh children across the country.

“Our core curriculum in the United States glosses over the Sikh religion in even the most privileged school systems, even though it’s the fifth largest religion in the world. Therefore, most children’s exposure related to turbans and beards are limited to the portrayals reinforced in the media related to the Taliban and terrorism. Imagine the collective impact, then, when the first picture from the Kenneth Cole campaign went up in a storefront in Rockefeller Center and appeared in GQ this month. For one of the first times, these children had an opportunity to have their Sikh identity represented in a way they can be proud of when they walk down the halls of their schools. I’m truly grateful for the opportunity to have a positive impact in these childrens’ lives, who through no fault of their own regularly brave hatred in the hallways.

“Only in the past half-century have we as a society curbed the widespread image in media of African-Americans as servants and slaves, and put an end to the anti-Semitic caricatures of Jews as conniving and obsessed with money.

“We’ve come a long way, but we’ve still got a long way to go.

“Although these Sikh children often suffer silently, they don’t need to.

“By starting at home and educating your family about the Sikh faith, every American can lend these children a hand in ending the rampant racism and abuse that plagues Sikh youth across the United States.”

The reaction from Sikhs on Internet chat forums and message boards has been overwhelmingly positive. A youtube comment sums it all up: “I love Kenneth Cole!” Although a few people have groused that Sonny is “too handsome” to represent the average Sikh, that sentiment was largely laughed off.

Alas, for all of his Sikhni admirers, Caberwal was married six months ago. But that won’t stop his many fans from fawning over his photos.