IT was once a stately glamorous ritual limited to lavish red carpet gala premieres, which flourished in Hollywood’s golden era gods and goddesses. It used to be synonymous with night of nights, which spawned a glut on the fashion savvy—the smartly moussed and coiffed, artfully cantilevered bosoms, airbrushed makeup, majestically, elegantly accessorized. It is the complete beauty works, an outcome that will make a society editor weep for joy.
Everyone plays along—women, men the undecided, as subsequent events has underscored, and from the eyes that has recorded the rise and fall of the mavericks on the red carpet. Today, it has become too much of a ritual, mechanized into a treadmill for marathon award events, that stretches into an all year round number of red carpet events. Today, it is no longer a razzmatazz restricted to movie stars, famous people, celebrities of every lustrious event, big or small, sublime or mediocre. It’s here to stay. Each producer wants to give something different.
In the Fil-Am community, it is the promise of fifteen minutes of glory, that which precedes some of its commercialized versions, luring teams of lustrous people—awardees, guests and audience that turn out into a free for all Kodak-ans. Our eyes have recorded the red carpet phenomenon within the decade, like some cattle show, in the solar flare of flashing cameras, with fairy tale klieg lights, complete with peppering from every microphone wielder, for total effect.
After the show follows the red carpet mockery of course. They are pecked to pieces, and that is when the smiles start wilting, a melody dying in their hearts. The criticism that awaits can be withering, shrilling, magnified in a saturation bombing waged on Facebook and Twitter.
But there are red carpeteer photo ops that have ushered in a phase of pure fresh breeze in their fashion triumphs, because there is no burden of expectation. They are the ones that primarily made difference, their simplicity entrances do not carry the high wattage of scrutiny red carpeteer are put under.
There’s couple Jun and Minda Valdecantos Chin. Somehow, there’s an aroma of exquisite cuisine, like a fiesta that gets wafted in the air, whenever they are near.
Annie Cuevas cannot cruise the red carpet without creating a stir. The quiet lady of her tourism era, toils in silence, works like a plow horse all day and expected to look like a butterfly at night.
There a young mother, Ludy Gilkinson, who manages not only the flourishing musical career of her son called Bagyo, a family optical clinic, and sons who fight in the name of the country.
Of a stunning beauty title holder, Lourdes Garcia believes that order is the shape upon which beauty depends on. The simple pleasures of concentrating on one task at a time, it can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. In the nursing world, her unbreachable defense against life cross currents, has made her an icon to both young and old alike.
There seems to be an inverse proportion between the number of red carpet events and the number of thoughts and feeling about women of stature, in a kind of composite echo, of all this writer said and did not say.
