5,760 NEW YORK MINUTES

(FROM A WEEKEND NOTE, THE EDITOR'S LETTER IN STYLE WEEKEND, EVERY FRIDAY IN MANILA BULLETIN, 14 MARCH 2008)

There was hardly any sign of Wall Street in trouble when I came to visit New York two weeks ago, upon the invitation of Pond’s. The weather was harsh with an average high of zero and an average low of five below. On Friday night, snow was falling on Midtown Manhattan and rain poured shortly thereafter, drenching the neighborhoods from Chelsea on the West Side to Gramercy on the East Side.

The city’s got the right name, New York. Nothing ever gets old around here. —Ralph Stephenson

But our motley crew of magazine editors was all dressed up for a night on the town, having just arrived the night before on a long yet comfortable flight aboard Cathay Pacific that took us from Manila through Hong Kong and then through Vancouver to the John F. Kennedy International Airport in Queens. Beneath the voluminous outerwear, the ladies kept their clothes to a bare minimum, with backs showing, necklines plunging, hemlines rising to show more than a hint of legs, and heels slender and deadly, keeping their poor little feet on eternal tiptoes and adding at least three inches to their height and a lot of sex to their outfits.

Mutya Laxa, marketing manager at Unilever in charge of skin and such brands as Pond’s, Dove, and Vaseline, was the perfect host. The trip was designed to showcase the great care with which Pond’s continues to enhance and even re-invent its product lines to deliver on its promise of longer youth and more lasting beauty, as well as practical, easy-to-apply—not to mention affordable—remedies to such stubborn skin problems as age spots, sun damage, and dullness.

On our first day, jet lag aside, we grudgingly left our lavish suites at the Four Seasons on East 57th between Madison and Park to go on a two-hour drive to Connecticut, where the Pond’s Institute, replete with doctors, experts, state-of-the-art equipment, and high-tech laboratories, wowed us with its dedication to research and development. It’s no surprise, of course, beauty being such a multi-billion-dollar industry, but it’s quite a revelation to me that billions of dollars—or its euro equivalent, the dollar being weak now—is packed into each tube of, say, Pond’s Age Miracle cream, which you and I can pick off a shelf at the grocery for less than P200.

Something very big is happening to this brand that has been a favorite of women since the New York pharmacist Theron T. Pond developed the witch-hazel wonder product called “Pond’s Golden Treasure” in 1846, which later gave way to the iconic Pond’s Cold Cream in 1914. It’s only a matter of time, about five weeks to be more exact, before the Pond’s users are blown away with yet another breakthrough, perhaps the breakthrough of breakthroughs. I am not yet allowed to divulge what has been revealed at the Pond’s Institute in Connecticut, but suffice it to say I am impressed that this brand doesn’t have to call itself a luxury product to invest as much in science and technology as many of the prestige brands that charge an arm and a leg for the same results—or at the very least for the same promises.

I am even more impressed that Mutya, whose brand stewardship, to say the least, is respectful of Pond’s heritage and keen on making its future as rosy as a pink rose, went out on a limb to show us the best of New York as a reflection of the brand’s commitment to the beautiful life.

And so we spent the cold weekend, feeling hot, hot, hot (from downing three orders of Black Russian in 20 minutes or less, in my case) at Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter’s Waverly Inn at 16 Bank between Fourth and Waverly, with no less than Sting and Trudy to gawk at, although we could have caught Cameron Diaz and Lindsay Lohan had we gone another day. From there, we took a yellow cab to Cain, a Chelsea nightclub described by the New York Magazine as “the next best thing to an African safari,” except that we were all too drunk with our pink bellinis to notice the elephant trunk door and the zebra hide bar and even Owen Wilson in the mass of bodies grooving to the music.

There’s more to remember our trip by, including hanging out with American Idol’s Constantine at the get-in-if-you-can Pink Elephant on West 27th Street til 5 a.m. and curing our hangover the next day with fabulous “Bloody Maries” at the trés, trés chic French bistro Pastis in the Meatpacking District, along with bottomless cups of coffee, French toast, and eggs any way we liked it. Of course, all our other meals were just as delightful, particularly breakfast at the timeless classic Carlyle Hotel on 76th corner Madison, which Princess Di used to frequent, and dinner at Iron Chef and former Nobu star Masaharu Morimoto’s eponymous restaurant in the outskirts of the Meatpacking District and Sapa on West 24th Street, where Uma Thurman and Colin Firth shot a scene for the movie Accidental Husband.

It was a New York state of mind, but, unlike that of the New Yorker who drove our stretch limo muttering about recession and
money being hard to come by, ours was completely worry-free. What about puffy eyes in the morning and dull skin from all that sleeplessness, alcohol, and cigarette smoke? Well, too bad but what’s so wrong with a weekend indulgence? That’s why brands like Pond’s hire scientists and inventors. Skin solutions are nothing short of a miracle and science, especially during Eureka moments, is a miracle, eh? But only if it works!

A
post me at aapatawaran@yahoo.com.