“The collection looks like it’s been designed by AI," a friend said when we passed a mega luxury store in central Hong Kong. I immediately understood what he meant, looking at the brand’s  “classic bags” being slapped on with a different fabric, marketed for the summer season. Coincidentally, it looked pretty similar to the bags hanging next door at another mega luxury brand.

Life is a journey filled with both triumphs and challenges. Resilience is perhaps the most important thing in the game of success. In our team, it manifests in the ability to take rounds and rounds of sometimes conflicting criticism and still have the strength and enthusiasm to keep going. I hope this issue inspires you to find beauty in adversity and celebrate every small victory.

It does give one a pleasing, orderly sort of feeling to take life’s random events and emotions and slot them into helpfully labeled boxes. Your crush isn’t texting you back? Mercury in retrograde probably kept him from getting the message. Taking a long time to make a decision? Probably because my Mars is in Gemini. When Jupiter enters my tenth house, my boss will finally recognise all my hard work. A combination of stress and uncertainty about the future is an ailment for which astrology can seem like the perfect balm.

Every day, we all have to decide what to put on and in ourselves. Getting dressed in the morning and choosing what to have for lunch are decisions that we make so often, they can become instinctive. I hope this issue inspires you to take a step back and think about those choices more critically.
Enjoy the taste issue!

Our cover stars are Aniq Razak and Batrisyia Razak, the sibling-model duo inspiring the new generation with their voices on and off the runway. Beyond modelling, Batrisyia is also a film graduate launching her own film company and Aniq is a law graduate who recently completed his pupillage—the perfect embodiment of beauty with brains (and some comedy chops. Check out their TikTok accounts to find out). The cover marks their first-ever magazine shoot together. “Individually, we’re powerful, but together, we’re even a greater force,” Batrisyia said, perfectly summarising our theme this month.

In this issue, we look at the cultural influence of sports-meets-fashion. Beyond one-off collaboration, athleisure and brand ambassadors, there is something more essential going on. Fashion Writer, Lorraine Chai dichotomizes how sports-inspired fashion pieces have become checkmates in the chessboard of luxury fashion. Elsewhere, Jewellery Editor, Nikita Nawawi argues that when it comes to jewellery-sport crossovers, opposites do attract. Lastly, check out our profile story featuring Malaysian icon Datuk Nicol Ann David and rising squash player Sivasangari Subramaniam in stunning fashion by Max Mara.

Pia Wurtzbach, our first Filipina cover star, who is considered the epitome of what is attractive and beautiful. After all, she did win the coveted Miss Universe title in 2015. A beauty queen, an actress, an advocate and now an author, Pia seems to have done it all—or so you’d think.

This issue ultimately studies the legacies we (want to) leave behind and unearth a lovely inheritance of the human condition: we are not alone. What echoes do our choices project into the world? What echoes buffer us from the past? On building GRAZIA Malaysia’s legacy, I’ve always said this is not a solo project. As we turned one, I was reminded that “you are only as good as your team.” Thank you to the GRAZIA Malaysia team for pulling off yet another remarkable issue.

Looking back at the past 12 months, it has been a study in the unknowing. Walking backwards 365 days, GRAZIA Malaysia has shared fashion as a great adventure. Through our platforms, we hoped to reframe our relationship with fashion, reconsider our connections with each other, and the way we see ourselves. We have witnessed how an image, a film, or a profile can inspire a conversation, and open windows to exciting, more inclusive narratives.

I am so grateful for the support and optimism since the day we started. Thank you for supporting our vision, and for holding us to a higher standard.

This issue also marks a first for Vanizha Vasanthanathan, our cover star who made her first solo appearance in any fashion magazine. A long overdue recognition after a decade in the industry, Vanizha told writer Pravin Nair, “It’s the big-name players in the industry who decide who makes it where. I’m here to tell them to look at me and everyone else who looks like me. We get to play too.”

On the cover, you’ll find former f(x) alumni, Korean pop star Krystal Jung. Inside, there are stories about the intricacies of fashion and music (pg.24); the musical journey of three up-and-coming local musicians (pg.66); and why you should add sound bathing into your self-care regimen (pg.42).

When you flip through this issue, you’ll also find music selected by the GRAZIA Malaysia team. Simply open up your Spotify app, scan the code, turn up the volume, and lose yourself in our pages—even if just for a little while. This issue is about offering a brief escape from the daily worries, the distressing news cycle and incessant notifications. A small moment of comfort: that’s what we’re trying to provide, issue after issue.

Now, press play.

For this month’s Editor’s Note, I have nothing to say about our usual topics. As we close this issue, amidst the deepest reflections and the most mundane thoughts that our days are made of, there is a war that is ongoing. An absurd war—like all wars.

The world is watching live, this gratuitous, unmeasured violence based on decades of conflicts. I don’t claim to understand what is going on fully, but the world is witnessing the admirable courage and resistance of a people willing to fight to the end for their identity and the greater good of freedom.

Amongst the horrifying headlines and images online, and cyber bombs thrown by keyboard warriors, I came upon a post by writer Xochitl Gonzalez in The Atlantic. It was titled, simply, “What Happened to Empathy?” Gonzalez writes: “Empathy is cultivated through interactions with people we don’t know well, those glimpses into other interior worlds. We have, over the past two decades—slowly and then quickly—‘optimized’ other people out of our lives. One app at a time, we’ve greatly reduced our need to casually engage with anyone we don’t know—or even to meaningfully engage with those we do.”

On a certain level, I understand this. The world can often feel too big and too messy that you just want to shut out the news, tune out the noise, and hide under your blanket. The only problem is when everybody else starts to get filtered out.

Gonzalez continues: “We have manicured out our lives and our feeds and our day-to-day existence the need for any and all interactions with anyone who has not been hand-picked by us, who is not of the same class or race or political position. We have found more and more ways to avoid engaging with others of our species. And in doing so, we have eroded our empathy.”

As the world is crashing in, our hearts are breaking yet we don’t know what to do. I don’t have any revolutionary suggestions to give apart from be kind and take in as much of others’ experiences as your heart can take.

For this month’s cover story, from the get-go, we knew we didn’t want to do a straight-up photoshoot. We wanted to explore the idea of a cover story as a fashion film. We reached out to Roanne Woo, who you might recognize from our August 2023 cover shoot. Not only is Roanne a model, but she is also a very talented young filmmaker whose works have been nominated for international festivals. And who else better to star in this little fashion film than model-turned-actress Nia Atasha, who happens to be best friends with Roanne?

The pair brainstormed the script, production, soundtrack, choreography, and editing. A week later, we were on set shooting Nia, playing seven different characters in the “Elemental” film. Needless to say, she pulled off every single one.

I hope you enjoy our fashion film–which you can find on our Instagram page–and the rest of the issue.

At GRAZIA Malaysia, we have always strived to build a longer table, not a taller fence; and everyone is invited. I’d like to think our magazine can celebrate greater representation in fashion and extend the conversation on how the industry can make more people feel seen and heard.

Before K-wave and T-wind dominated our pop culture, once upon a time, Hong Kong used to churn out pop stars who were devoured by fans across Asia. During its golden years, Hong Kong birthed stars like Leslie Cheung and Anita Mui in the ‘80s and the Four Heavenly Kings in the ’90s. Cantopop and movies have helped create a common cultural identity for Cantonese speakers worldwide. Over the last few decades, however, it has been overshadowed by Taiwanese pop acts as well as the meteoric rise of K-pop, and more recently, Thai stars. 

Today, with the help of a new generation of artists, Cantopop and movies are slowly finding their way back to the playlists and screens of Hongkongers, restoring the Cantonese culture to its former glory. I hope you are thrilled to see Louise Wong, who is part of Hong Kong’s biggest rising stars, on our cover this month. 

It has been phenomenal two years for Louise Wong, to say the least. In her career-defining performance in Anita, the first-time actor made an incredible impression playing the much-beloved late Cantopop diva Anita Mui. Her second leading role in A Guilty Conscience, released this January, is now the highest-earning Hong Kong film ever, grossing almost US$15 million to date. Now, with everything she touches becoming gold, Wong has no problem putting her performance on display.

On the other side of Asia, Nita Mukesh Ambani is putting India’s rich art, culture, and heritage on display. In ‘The Gateway of New India’, learn how one woman’s love for arts is making Mumbai a world-class creative capital. 

In this “Exhibition” issue, we also speak to Venezuelan artist Eduardo Enrique, feature artworks by nine artists to chronicle fashion’s new vanguards, and explore our dream gallery with curator Frida Aasen. 

I hope you find inspiration in this issue.

Habitat, by definition, refers to the place or the location where a biological population lives, resides, or simply exists. So, what does habitat mean to the people of the dispossessed? In this issue, we take an inclusive look into the plight of refugees who have been rehomed to Malaysia. The story of Parastoo Theatre, founded by Afghan refugee Saleh Sepas, who is empowering refugees through the performing arts, is particularly poignant. Find out how you can make a contribution to the organisation in “Life, In Limbo”, (pg.94)
In fashion, rehoming your clothes is the latest response to the environmental, social, and economic impacts of the industry’s waste crisis. Circularity is a word that’s used a lot in fashion at the moment—but what would a truly circular fashion industry look like? We unpack the movement in “Green Comes in All Shades” (pg.32).  

I think ultimately, overconsumption is the root of the fashion biodiversity problem. We are now buying more clothes than ever, which is bad for the planet. It’s not good for the clothes either, because things move so fast now that quality becomes lower and lower. If you want to have a better relationship with fashion, you’ll need to rethink buying clothes as an investment: slowly collecting pieces you really love, that you really want to own. Pick up Alec Leach’s book The World Is on Fire But We’re Still Buying Shoes if you’ve ever wondered how you’ve amassed a wardrobe full of clothes you don’t particularly like. 

This conversation in circularity also continues in beauty, where we speak to new-gen Korean hair care brand AROMATICA about circular life and the future of sustainable beauty products. 

Finally, the future seems promising for our cover star Priyanka Chopra Jonas. With a comedy alongside Idris Elba and John Cena, a project with Mindy Kaling, and a Bollywood movie coming up, the Indian beauty is just getting started on her “PCJ” era. I hope you enjoy this issue.

The word “social” translates to a collective noun for communal activities involving a group of people. In today’s global village, however, this includes virtual engagements on social media—for better or worse. In this issue, we delve into the social(s), tackling contentious topics such as the cancel culture in fashion (Page 38) and the current state of our local movie scene (Page 90). We also spoke to the scintillating Ms. Puiyi (Page 94) for a different perspective on social media presence as she gains nationwide attention.

Cultures across the globe have always associated springtime with a sign of new beginnings. As it’s
the first issue of GRAZIA Malaysia, it seemed only appropriate to tie that in with grace and elegance.

In this issue, we explore the silhouettes of Spring/Summer ‘23 that herald a new form of femininity
(Page 62) and discover a new ecological oasis in Blue Lagoon. We also speak to five outstanding
Malaysian ladies in Women Talking and their new way of influencing—with intent. We won’t spoil it
for you, so take the time and enjoy our very first issue.

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Born in 1938 and at the forefront of progessive social issues ever since, the fast-paced nature of change is second nature to GR AZIA’s editorial desk.

GRAZIA is the most STYLISH, INNOVATIVE and AGENDA-SETTING brand for the woman changing it all. It is at the forefront of fashion, beauty, culture, and technology that inspires and provokes readers through bold, compelling content powered by purpose.

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Grazia Malaysia - September 2023

Grazia Malaysia - September 2023

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