Mahlia S. Lon
Attending the Lux Style Awards held at the Expo, Lahore, at the end of February, I saw all the action first hand. It was super well organized with celebrities lining up the red carpet in a civilized manner as the waiting media cameramen clicked away. Everyone looked suitably glamorous though heavily made up in the early evening light outside and surprisingly there were no hordes of uninvited people trying to get in. Suffice to say, the security was tight. Inside there was a waiting hall for guests to mingle over soft drinks and hors d’oeuvres. Finally, came the auditorium, which looked different than usual as Jalal Salahuddin’s team had put up massive LED lit black backboards to hide the bare walls, lending a cosy evening look. The only issue guests faced was the interminable delay “Pakistani style†of the show. If you are getting an award, it’s worth the wait, but for the sake of all others isn’t it high time we progressed into the 21st century and became more punctual? After all, as they say, time is money!
Speaking of celebrity award winners, this brings us to our Memorable Romance feature of this issue. Seeing live social media feeds at the LSA and non-stop selfies, I thought it would be interesting to juxtapose and contrast it with a time when celebrities were more reticent about their movements and private lives. Grace Kelly, despite being a popular and Oscar winning actress of the ‘50s, kept her private life separate from her carefully nurtured onscreen image. The public knew her as the “ice princess,†even her wedding to Prince Rainier of Monaco was stage managed by the studio she was signed with, MGM, but in her private life her sexual voraciousness and unabashedness, could rival modern day Western celebs like JLo or JLaw, etc. It’s an extremely interesting story, a study in what we Pakistanis do best as well, the carefully crafted divide between personal peccadilloes and public perception.
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