It was an ordinary editorial meeting at Prestige magazine’s desk when the PR email landed. A pitch for a cover story: Priyanka Chopra, the Bollywood star, freshly announced as the face of Guess’s Holiday 2013 campaign. Photographed by none other than Bryan Adams - you remember, the Canadian singer who sang mushy songs in the 90s, a soundtrack of several rom coms. A new side hustle in photography?! Ok then...
Chopra, the first Indian, first South Asian, Guess Girl. The discussion that followed was long and, in hindsight, revealing. I put my two cents in. Indian actresses, much like many Chinese stars before them, had tried to break into Hollywood. Very few had ever reached anything close to Julia Roberts territory.
The erudite thespian Shabana Azmi hadn’t. Even the staggeringly beautiful Aishwarya Rai - Miss World, no less - hadn’t quite cracked that particular code. So why would a dusky-skinned, husky-voiced, multi-syllabic name like Priyanka Chopra make any real ripples?
The room largely agreed. The campaign looked glamorous, of course. Shot in a Mediterranean-style villa in Pasadena around August or September 2013, the black-and-white images carried that classic Guess sensuality. The ads would land in the December issues of Harper’s Bazaar, Elle, Marie Claire and the rest. Still, we wondered whether it would be more than a fleeting fashion moment.
Every succeeding year since 2013, Ms Chopra, now Mrs Chopra-Jonas, has systematically proved us wrong.
There were the inevitable missteps: a few large-scale, heavily hyped films that underwhelmed (Baywatch among them). Yet she kept showing up - in primetime American television, in The Matrix sequels, on the major talk-show circuit. Where some of her contemporaries appeared slightly guarded or formal, Chopra was consistently elegant, spoke exceedingly well and was genuinely amusing. She possessed that elusive star je ne sais quoi: personable, charming, and completely at ease in rooms that had rarely made space for women who looked or sounded like her.
Looking back, the Guess campaign was never just a fashion job. It was an early, confident declaration that she intended to operate on a global stage - and that she would do so on her own terms.
We dismissed the pitch back then. She made sure we never forgot it.
BTW, I spent the day with Priyanka Chopra in 2009 for Post magazine feature when she was a newcomer.
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