How Artist and Model Arpana Rayamajhi Landed Gigs With Victoria's Secret and L'Oréal Being a jewelry designer without training and a model without an agent hasn't slowed her down. Whitney BauckMar 29, 2017 Photo: Whitney Bauck/Fashionista Arpana Rayamajhi has the kind of resume that would make any fashion-loving multi-hyphenate envious. As a jewelry designer, she's been commissioned to make pieces for the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show and landed editorial placement in international editions of Vogue; as a model, she's represented beauty and fashion brands like L'Oréal and Urban Outfitters; as a style icon, she’s attracted the attention of Man Repeller, The Cut and V Magazine&nbsp;— not to mention a little publication called Fashionista, where she was scouted for her street style back in 2013. But what's perhaps most amazing is that Rayamajhi has made all of the above happen without help from a team of agents and PR professionals. She still personally hand-makes every piece of jewelry in her line — including each of the elaborate pieces worn on the Victoria's Secret runway — and all of her modeling gigs have come about organically, usually through people finding her on Instagram. ADVERTISEMENT Thanks for watching! So, how did the former art student from Kathmandu, Nepal become such a sensation in New York? She attributes her success to a balance between hard work and lucky timing. "I'm really fortunate," she says. "I do my part, but there's a lot of things life just offers you. I've learned to accept them." Having grown up in Nepal, Rayamajhi got her start in New York as a student at Cooper Union, where she studied painting and sculpture. But the heady mix of art history and academic criticism she encountered in class made her hungry to return to the things that had drawn her to art in the first place — namely, that it was "fun and it felt good." Shortly thereafter, she began making her own earrings and necklaces. Besides providing her with a way to source beautiful pieces for her own outfits, jewelry-making satisfied Rayamajhi's instinct toward creative work without all the ideological baggage of traditional fine art. That unique starting point has continued to inform how Rayamajhi designs, and it's clear that the 29-year-old still thinks of herself more in art terms than fashion ones. Her concept-driven pieces incorporate unusual materials like synthetic neon hair from wigs and pencil erasers, in addition to beads she sources from her travels around the world. Each piece is one of a kind, and Rayamajhi sometimes displays them&nbsp;in gallery settings as one would a collection of paintings. One of her best customers has even told her that they purchased an intricate Rayamajhi piece for the express purpose of hanging it on the wall rather than wearing it. Inside Arpana Rayamajhi's studio. Photo: Whitney Bauck/Fashionista ">Inside Arpana Rayamajhi's studio. Photo: Whitney Bauck/Fashionista ">Inside Arpana Rayamajhi's studio. Photo: Whitney Bauck/Fashionista ">Inside Arpana Rayamajhi's studio. Photo: Whitney Bauck/Fashionista ">Inside Arpana Rayamajhi's studio. Photo: Whitney Bauck/Fashionista ">Inside Arpana Rayamajhi's studio. Photo: Whitney Bauck/Fashionista "> 6 Gallery 6 Images "Jewelry and studio art-making are obviously different disciplines in some ways, but for me they collide. I'm somewhere in between art and design," says Rayamajhi. She's also somewhere between being a maker and a muse. While Rayamajhi didn't set out to be a model and claims she doesn't have the "physicality for modeling" — she's a very petite 5'4" — her appearance has been a boon for her jewelry business. While she often got stopped on the street&nbsp;when she first moved to New York in 2008&nbsp;to ask whether she was represented by a modeling agency, it wasn't until she lost her mother to cancer and graduated from Cooper Union&nbsp;at age 27 that she really considered modeling. "I began understanding that I don't know how long I have to live, I don't know what's going to happen with my life," she says. "I thought, 'I might as well do as much as I can to share my work with people.' That's when I started putting myself out there on social media. Initially, it was just to show my work." While the response to her jewelry was enthusiastic online, Rayamajhi also found that the response to pictures of herself were just as positive. As her colorful personal style and striking features continued to rack up&nbsp;likes, Rayamajhi found herself getting invited to model for a variety of projects. <p style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 18px; letter-spacing: inherit; white-space: