Tag: Joseph L. Garcia

WHAT A life it must have been, to be as fabulous as the world can allow, and still become just a footnote in somebody else’s story. Caroline Lee Radziwill, style icon, and one of the characters of the great Kennedy panoply, died in her New York home on Feb. 15, aged 85. Yet for everything she had been (socialite, writer, interior designer, PR executive, actress; princess, even), it is both a blessing and a curse that she will enter history known primarily as being the younger sister of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis.

“PERK” can mean making something more lively, or else a small bonus. Last Tuesday, BusinessWorld experienced “perk” in every sense of the word with the launch of Nespresso’s limited edition blends: the Caffes Venezia and the Istanbul, held in the Nespresso boutique in Rockwell.

THE LIFE of actress Audrey Hepburn wasn’t as perfect as her movies would suggest. Growing up as the daughter of a divorced and impoverished Dutch noble, Ms. Hepburn lived through the ravages of the Second World War, facing a fate of near-starvation during the Dutch famine of 1944. During the latter part of her life and her career as a successful actress, Ms. Hepburn joined UNICEF (the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund) in the 1980s as a Goodwill Ambassador. According to the UNICEF website, Ms. Hepburn had said on her appointment, “I can testify to what UNICEF means to children, because I was among those who received food and medical relief right after World War II. She continues, “I have a long-lasting gratitude and trust for what UNICEF does.” She was also known to have said, “There is a moral obligation that those who have should give to those who don’t.”

THE FIRST flames of love are nothing short of magical. But what happens when the flames die down? Through the years, lingering smoke and smolder between two loving individuals is all that’s needed to stay together, and that sexy, calming ember is captured perfectly by the Valentine’s Dinner offering of 22 Prime in the Discovery Suites.

FASHION shows our desires and our means to achieve them through carefully selected items. In turn it also begins to see our values and how we seek to live them. In an exhibit called Fashion Revolution at the Metropolitan Museum of Manila, we are given alternatives on how to live more sustainably through the clothes that we interact in and interact with.

FOR ITS Spring/Summer 2019 collection, Longchamp goes on a gender-bender and takes its womenswear collection’s cues from, well, men.

JUST IN case you missed it, the doors of Chateau 1771 are open again, having moved from Greenbelt to One Bonifacio High Street.

LITTLE CAESARS used to be a comforting sight in the streets of Manila, until as kids grew up, the branches of the pizza chain closed one by one. Now we can chase a little bit of the past with the reopening of Little Caesars in Ermita.

QUICK, what does a building have in common with a shoe?

LOVE ISN’T a simple affair to be conducted in silence and secrets at the Manila Hotel. For its Valentine’s Day offering, a concert-cum-dinner called A Taste of Love, love will be grand, shouted across the rooftops and sweeping lovers off their feet.

MAYBE airline food is just there to make landing even more worthy, though with new meals by AirAsia, we guess it really does make the journey matter.

EMBEDDED into every garment that has touched skin is a memory. In Glorious Dias, a vintage shop in Poblacion, racks and racks of clothing hold memories: of people, and of a world that has passed, and with every ticking moment, continues to do so.

FASHION designer Cesar Gaupo died on Saturday, Jan. 19, having just celebrated his birthday. He had just turned 72 on Jan. 6.

NOSTALGIC music fans bit their fists hard when Hard Rock Café in Glorietta closed its doors in 2017. Now, they can release their fists, for it has reopened at the Conrad S Maison in the Mall of Asia area in Pasay City.

PIEDMONT is an Italian region soaked in history — and wine. It was here that the House of Savoy held court, the royal house that waged wars to unite the fragmented Italian states into one, the basis of Italy as we know it today. Piedmont is also home to the Nebbiolo grape, which goes into the production of one of Italy’s most famed wines, the Barolo.

CUISINE and culture in many nations can be classified into several levels. As high culture and haute cuisine go hand-in-hand, so do home-cooking and pop culture. A restaurant called Siam Sukh Jai Thai Home Cooking in S Maison claims that they can serve Thai cuisine as it is found on the streets and homes of Bangkok.

CONTI’S Bakeshop and Restaurant, the well-loved source of holiday Mango Bravo cake along with other goodies, was gobbled up by Davao-based Dennis Uy’s Udenna Corp. last year. As it stands, expect a few changes in the coming year for the familiar brand including a major expansion.

THREE HENS are going to try to get your tongue buzzing and your lips moving with a wine brand called, well, Three Hens.

“1” is a concept in Filipino romance that’s undefinable in other languages. We could describe it in parts: the giddiness; the rush when you feel a frisson of emotion for your beloved. Could you call “kilig” butterflies in your stomach? In any case, it won’t matter for this review, because I felt no such thing while watching One Great Love, which to me lacks a beating heart.

NO sisterhood is ever perfect, but Mary, Marry Me makes it look so fun. I guess that’s how I would describe the rest of Mary, Marry Me: imperfect, but at least a good romp.

WE ALL long for a space where we can truly be ourselves. White as the uniform chef Jessie Sincioco often wears, her new building, at a cozy five stories, looms above the streets of a residential area near Makati’s City Hall.

“THOSE who really love, love in silence, with deeds and not with words,” wrote Carlos Ruiz Zafon in his novel The Shadow of the Wind. It is perhaps one of the world’s greatest ironies that some of the world’s most beautiful things are hidden from the human eye. I can go on and on with examples of these, but one of the most luxurious things hidden from the naked eye are the movements of the watches from A. Lange & Söhne.

MEMORIES OF Christmas past are indelibly stamped on the holiday menu of Guevarra’s, chef Rolando Laudico’s buffet restaurant.

THE PERFECT companion to 22 Prime’s Christmas menu, called The Nature of Christmas, is a lot of holiday cheer, beltless pants, and maybe a hefty winter coat.

If our world worships stuff, a counterculture has arisen about the opposite: the rejection of stuff. Books on the subject, serving as bibles for this...

Love Marie Ongpauco Escudero, otherwise known by her stage name Heart Evangelista, is known for her vast collection of Hermès bags. “I have one...

Understanding the compulsion to collect.

THE SENSE of smell awakens something primal in many of us. While smelling something might bring back memories of an elevated, cherished status, it’s a different story during social interactions. Humans are still animals, and through scent, we pick up on cues the same way animals do: through scent, we pick up on a person’s health, values (I mean, does this person take the time for grooming? Does that person respect me enough to take a shower before meeting me?), and, like it or not, social status.

A NETWORKING company promises that its serums will make you look like a queen in seven days.

SEVERAL French chefs have gone down in history as the best: there’s Escoffier, and then there’s Careme; and many others besides. But these men were the best for personifying the cooking styles of their day: the excesses of the Belle Epoque are firmly stamped with Escoffier’s name, while the French Empire lives on with Careme’s. Alain Ducasse, the French superstar chef who currently has the most Michelin stars (21 at our last count; Joel Robuchon had 31) for his restaurants, will go down in our age perhaps, for understanding the Zeitgeist that has gripped our world, from lifestyle to climate change.

JAMON iberico, made from the Spanish native Iberico pig, is one of Spain’s most beloved exports. At its best, it’s a whole leg with a black hoof, a telltale sign that you’re eating a cured ham from the pampered Black Iberico pig.

WELL-DRESSED guests got up to give couturier Randy Ortiz a standing ovation at his 30th anniversary show at The Peninsula Manila last week. The entire...

WE KNOW we have seafood in abundance here, Manila, but let’s give US-based Red Lobster a chance.

CANADA isn’t all about maple syrup. Aside from its booming industries in all fields, a certain source of pride are its agricultural products, including beef.

FASHION’S beautiful bad boy (at least according to some British newspapers) Jordan Barrett set foot in Manila on Nov. 20 for a fashion show showcasing Penshoppe’s Holiday 2018 collection.

GET YOUR DIY hands ready, Manila: Ikea is finally coming to town.

SYNERGY means quite simply, the “creation of a whole, greater than the sum of its parts.” We witnessed synergy on Nov. 13 in The Peninsula’s Old Manila when two budding masters, Allan Briones and Jordy Navarra, joined forces for a memorable preview of a dinner called “A Fourtaste of Things to Come” set for Nov. 28.

FOR EVERY bite of chef Billy Cheong’s roasted goose, you’re tasting about a century’s worth of history and the labor of a day and a half.

IN THE presence of less-polite company, the audience at the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) last Sunday, Nov. 11, would have frothed at the mouth and would have fallen in a faint from sheer ecstasy at the sights and sounds at this year’s Ternocon.

IF YOU shop in Shangri-La Plaza, you’re up for one flamboyant holiday.

WITHIN EVERY bottle of wine is a summary of time and space in which a wine was made: from every drop of sunlight and rain, to the air and the soil from which the vines absorb life.

FOR 30 years now, the SSI (Stores Specialists Inc.) Group has changed the retail landscape of the Philippine by bringing in some of the world’s most influential brands to the Philippines: think Gucci, Prada, Calvin Klein, and Alexander McQueen, among many, many, others.

FOR THE 35^th anniversary of Carolina Herrera, it’s taking the founder’s initials seriously in a campaign called the “Insignia.”

TORY BURCH opened its fourth boutique in the Philippines in August, but was only officially launched late last month. The Rockwell branch is the biggest Tory Burch store in the country to date, surpassing its other locations in Greenbelt 5, Rustan’s Makati, and Rustan’s Shangri-La.

FOR millennia, humans have sought for ways to preserve their dead, perhaps as a way for the bereaved to remember, and for the deceased to be remembered. Since the body also served as a shell for the spirit, it was also believed by many ancient cultures that a well-preserved body, possibly better and purer than it had been in life, guaranteed a person to live beyond death in a comfortable afterlife. An incorrupt body could also be seen as a reflection of the soul: in the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox faiths, the body of an extraordinarily good person that has been revealed to be intact after death just may place one on the path to sainthood -- a prerequisite being that this body has not been preserved through embalming, but by some miracle. Examples of these saints would be St. Bernadette and Saint Elizabeth, of the Catholic and Orthodox faiths, respectively.