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IIFA Awards in New York had nothing to offer

Eastern Eye Staff
By Eastern Eye StaffJul 21, 2017
Eastern Eye Staff
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by Asjad Nazir

I mentioned on Twitter the IIFA Awards winners for Best Actor and Best Actress would be Shahid Kapoor and Alia Bhatt even before the ceremony took place.

It wasn’t because I had any inside knowledge and they certainly didn’t deliver the finest performances of the last year, but I knew they would win because Bollywood awards have become that predictable. Even though they acted all surprised at the ceremony in New York last weekend, I am certain both of them knew they would win.

Today, pretty much all Bollywood award ceremonies will give awards to high-profile stars who agree to attend or perform on stage. That is why plenty of great films annually get ignored like Bollywood’s highest grossing movie Dangal, which shamefully didn’t even get a nomination in the major categories at the 18th edition of the international awards. Smaller independent Indian films, which are making a huge mark and showing amazing artistry, were also ignored in favour of lesser movies that featured big name stars.

Diljit Dosanjh won the Best Debut award for his role in Udta Punjab and coincidentally also did a performance on stage. Neerja was decent, but it certainly wasn’t the greatest release of 2016, yet it won the award for Best Film. Anirudh Roy Chaudhary won the Best Director award for Pink, but there were filmmakers who showed far more creative flair in 2016.

Amit Mishra won Best Playback Singer (Male) for Ae Dil Hai Mushkil when Arijit Singh was clearly the stand-out star of that soundtrack. Meanwhile The Best Playback Singer (Female) was jointly shared by Kanika Kapoor for Udta Punjab and Tulsi Kumar for Airlift, but I would wager most Bollywood fans of him can’t name the songs they won for. Then of course a major Bollywood award wouldn’t be complete without a made-up trophy, which went to Alia Bhatt who got a Style Icon Award and a rubbish dance performance by a big star, which this time was delivered by Salman Khan.

Today these award ceremonies pay a handful of A-list stars and pad them out with mostly Z-list celebrities who would happily go to the opening of an envelope if photographers were present. That is why I have chosen to not go to these ceremonies any more, which have become a commercial enterprise and why most of Bollywood stays away from such awards.

Quite frankly. Like most of the Indian film industry, I don’t care where next year’s IIFA awards will be.

alia bhattiifa awardsshahid kapoor
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Kim Kardashian's SKIMS opens on Regent Street, in the same country her love life won't stop making headlines

Kim Kardashian attends the 2026 Met Gala celebrating "Costume Art" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 04, 2026 in New York City. (Photo by Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for The Met Museum/Vogue)

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Kim Kardashian's SKIMS opens on Regent Street, in the same country her love life won't stop making headlines

Key Highlights:

  • SKIMS has opened its first European flagship store, a 12,000 square foot site on London's Regent Street, its biggest single move into the UK market to date.
  • The store was designed by Rafael de Cárdenas, the same architect behind SKIMS' New York flagship, and features a nude sculpture by longtime collaborator Vanessa Beecroft.
  • The opening lands in the same summer Kardashian's relationship with Formula 1 driver Lewis Hamilton has been playing out publicly across Britain, from the Cotswolds to a shared trip through Tokyo.
There are a handful of people on earth whose store openings and whose love lives both make global news in the same breath. Kim Kardashian is one of them, and this summer, both have happened in the same country at the same time.
SKIMS, the shapewear brand she built into a multi-billion-dollar label, has just opened its first flagship store outside America, taking over a 12,000 square foot corner site on Regent Street. It's a genuine landmark for the brand. It's also, almost incidentally, happening in the exact country where her relationship with Lewis Hamilton has been playing out in public for months.

What does the store actually feel like inside?

Walk in, and the first thing you see is a towering nude sculpture by artist Vanessa Beecroft, lit from above by an oversized ceiling disc, framed by curved walls in the same fleshy, neutral tones SKIMS uses on its packaging. It's the kind of entrance built for a photo, and it's clearly meant to be one. The rest of the two-level store follows the same language throughout: soft curves, cream and beige everywhere, cabinets rounded enough to double as seats. It was designed by Rafael de Cárdenas, the same studio behind SKIMS' Fifth Avenue flagship in New York, so the London store deliberately echoes that one rather than starting from scratch.
Kardashian called London "one of the most inspiring fashion cities" in a statement marking the opening, and the choice to make it SKIMS' first flagship outside America wasn't accidental. Inside, shoppers get access to the brand's full UK range in one place for the first time, shapewear, loungewear, menswear, and the NikeSKIMS collaboration line, rather than piecing it together online.

Why has she been so visible in Britain this year?

Because the store isn't the only reason. Kardashian's relationship with Formula 1 world champion Lewis Hamilton became public in February, and since then the pair have been photographed together at a private members' club in the Cotswolds, walking arm in arm through Tokyo, and browsing a Vivienne Westwood store on the same trip. It's the kind of relationship that seems to generate a new set of paparazzi photos every few weeks, in a different country each time.
Not everyone is convinced it's as simple as it looks. Some entertainment outlets have reported anonymous claims that the relationship functions partly as a "showmance," a strategically timed pairing rather than a purely private one. Neither Kardashian nor Hamilton has addressed that characterisation directly, and the two have a longer history than the recent headlines suggest, having first been photographed together at a London awards show back in 2014, years before either was linked to the other romantically.
SKIMS Regent Street, at a glance
Location245-247 Regent Street, London
Size12,000 sq ft, two levels
DesignerRafael de Cárdenas
Notable featureNude sculpture by Vanessa Beecroft
SignificanceSKIMS' first flagship store outside the US
Product rangeShapewear, loungewear, menswear, NikeSKIMS

Is any of this actually connected?

Not officially. There's no suggestion the store opening and the relationship were planned to overlap, and SKIMS has been building toward a European flagship since at least 2021, when a smaller Paris pop-up tested the same visual identity on a much smaller scale. But the coincidence is hard to ignore: for a few months this year, the two most-photographed parts of Kim Kardashian's life, the brand she built and the relationship everyone's trying to decode, have both been unfolding on the same small island, a few hundred miles apart from each other at most.

For a woman whose entire career has run on being watched, Britain's had an unusually good seat this year.