bambina writes

WOW Philippines

I think the Department of Tourism should hire me.  Though certainly not the DOT under the current administration.  Yes, I'm being utterly political.

In the last 12 months, Philippine luxury retail has had quite a bit of coverage in WWD.  There have been stories on Greenbelt and Ayala Land, Rafe, Melissa Dizon and Eairth, and players who have shaped the market like SSI and Anton Huang, Jappy Gonzalez, Ricco and Tina Ocampo, Juan Miguel Ongsiako, and Louis Vuitton.  There was also a story on Adora I wish I'd written but my editor beat me to it!

Last Monday, my article on how the luxury market has come of age in the Philippines appeared in a special WWD Real Estate Review  issue.  It was in fact the lead-in article (yay!):  A Family's Retail Legacy.  Because, of course, where would luxury retail in the country be without the vision of the Tantoco family?

What Would Paul Newman Do?

 

I must have always had a thing for older men.  

When I was 11, maybe up to the time I was 13, I used to make lists of my celebrity crushes.  Not for me the likes of Leif Garrett, David and Shaun Cassidy and Parker Stevenson - the late 70s equivalent of Zac Efron, the Jonas Brothers and Chace Crawford.  Too young, too scrubbed, too bubble gum.  Instead my lists featured - or so I believed - men of humor and character, men of experience, men of assured swagger.  Men like Robert Redford, Warren Beatty, James Garner, Alain Delon, James Caan, even Beau Bridges...

And then there was Paul Newman and his impossibly beautiful blue eyes, in a class of his own.