Gourmet glossy

Gourmet glossy

This weekend's social events were kicked off by Farzana Contractor, CEO of daily tabloid Afternoon and wife of its editor Behram Contractor (fondly called Busybee). Farzana recently introduced a new food, wine and lifestyle magazine, Upper Crust. The couple say they've been toying with the idea for quite sometime, but took the plunge when an international publication approached Busybee for a tie-up. Launched on Friday, with a dinner held at the Oberoi poolside, Upper Crust's first issue has a special feature on Hyderabadi cuisine, written by Behram and with photographs by Farzana (who is quite bright with the camera). At the launch, the guests were appropriately treated to a Hyderabadi banquet, which went down very well with both food-lovers (Shobha De, Sabira Merchant) and foodies (Karen Anand, Jiggs Kalra and Asit Chandamal). And as if that wasn't party enough, Contractor invited her friends to a meal at Starters & More the next day. The guests just couldn't leave the dance floor untiltwo in the morning. Judging by the success of both the parties, it seems the quarterly will soon be a househod name. And for those who still haven't had enough, there's yet another magazine launch to look forward to this month. Keep yourself free for the launch of a new men's magazine, MW. And from what we hear, there's also a new interiors mag in the offing. That, however, will be launched only later in the year.

Pub Crawl

While the literary crowd may have been busy spending their Saturday night at the Oberoi rooftop, the more glam crowd was spotted at the opening of a new pub and resturant in Juhu. Called Paparazzi, this pub-cum-restaurant serves both Continetal and Chinese cuisine. That night, however, revellers seemed to be more interested in downing bubbly... Among those in high spirits: Suchitra Pillai, Ash Chandler, Viveka Babajee, Nina Manuel, Michelle Tung and Anjala Zaveri.

Kuwait Couture

Kuwait Airways held a bash on Saturday night too. At the Crystal Room. Thissit-down dinner was attended by Michael Bates and USIS' Sheldon Austin, and also Mumbai's regular party animal Kishen Mulchandani. But the highlight of the evening was Lascelles Symons' fashion show. This model-turned-designer has been designing corsets for over three years now and though he does not sell his clothes from an outlet, he does have an impressive clientele, many of whom hail from the Middle East. His show was simple with Anna Bredmeyer, Anu Ahuja, Viveka Babajee, a bald Diandra Soares, Aparna Sharma and Svetlana Casper on the ramp. Lascelles showed 30 outfits ranging from a heavily embroidered corset worn as a ball gown with a full skirt, to simple sleek corsets worn with trousers. Though there were no saris on display, Lascelles also uses corests as sari blouses.

And Finally...

Though this may have been Lascelles' first show, you can expect to see more of his work this spring when he hopes to hold a large fashion show. With more outfits and many more girls. And who knows, maybe youwould get to see some men's clothes as Lascelles was the man behind Anil Kapoor's wardrobe in Taal?