Skye Daru

Skye Daru won’t tolerate being seen as one-dimensional. In the new age of the social media supermodel, Daru knows the key to success is more than just showing off her latest spread in Teen Vogue. She has to be versatile, personable, transparent and mysterious — all at once. It’s not an easy feat but Daru executes this balancing act flawlessly, her Instagram showing off a combination of behind-the-scenes photos from shoots, pictures with friends in Washington Square Park and the occasional badass post-boxing pose.

Daru, who balances her modeling career with her musical aspirations, certainly leads a diverse lifestyle. But as an Asian-American woman on the runway she’s well aware of the lack of ethnic diversity in the modeling world — something she sees changing.

“I think the future of fashion is diversity,” Daru said. “Especially in fashion week this year — for example, the Kanye [West] show was centered around diversity and culture. I’m excited to see different looks and ethnicities.”

With her poise and levelheadedness, it’s hard to believe that Daru is only a first-year student. She is vastly more experienced and professional than her peers: Daru signed with Ford Models as a freshman in high school and has been working nonstop since then.

Having lived alongside other models in Times Square during her summer before college, sharing a Third North dorm room with five other girls is nothing new to her.

“[Over the summer] there were seven girls and bunkbeds and everything —  the first time I walked in there were bras and food everywhere,” Daru said.

Daru already has big academic plans with her double major in recorded music from Clive Davis and computer science from the College of Arts and Science. It was fellow model and noted NYU student Karlie Kloss who inspired her to look into coding; she took one of the supermodel’s Kode with Klossy classes and was instantly enamored with the subject. Music, however, remains her real passion: her strong voice and songwriting skills shine in electropop songs like “DNA” and “Wild Side,” the latter of which has over 45,000 streams on SoundCloud.

Daru is a driven quadruple threat. Now signed with Wilhelmina Models, she hopes to walk in a big name show at Fashion Week and get an internship in the music business during her time here. For most students, the first year of college is difficult in and of itself, let alone having a budding music and modeling career as well.

“Time management is something I definitely had to overcome in high school — I was missing school for shoots and meetings but I still managed to do well and graduate at the top of my class,” Daru said. “I just think the most important thing about being a model is keeping a level head.”