Keeping Up With Kat
GQ India|November 2019
Katrina Kaif has had a breakthrough year as an actor, with films like Zero and Bharat. Now she’s navigating uncharted waters, as an entrepreneur with her new beauty brand. Welcome to Kaif’s brave new world
Shikha Sethi
Keeping Up With Kat

It’s nearly midnight, and Suite 501 at The Ritz-Carlton, Dubai is buzzing with activity. GQ’s Fashion Team has laid out an exotic array of monochromatic clothing along the back of a sofa. There’s a sleek black leather Bottega Veneta dress; a satin and lace Christopher Kane cupcake dress with a plunging neckline; an elegant Burberry gown with feathers. There are perilously high heels and chunkier clogs lined up too, as if in a firing range.

Katrina Kaif ’s entourage is here in full force – her security detail is sat outside the suite, guarding access; her manager is tapping away at a laptop in one corner; her digital assistant, who helps manage her social media accounts, has set up a temporary workstation at the 12-seater dining table.

A minute later, Kaif opens the sliding doors to her bedroom and emerges in a dark blue tee, black sweatpants, her hair half up and fastened with a clip. She’s more petite than I expect, and more energetic, given that she’s just gotten off a flight, and it’s been a long day. Her team may be wilting, not having slept for the past two nights, but not her. It’s T-5 days to the launch of Kaif ’s beauty brand, Kay Beauty, in partnership with Nykaa.

Kaif is right in step with a global trend of celebrities launching make-up lines – everyone from Kylie Jenner to Victoria Beckham to Rihanna – but in India, she’s the first. The stakes are high. “How many magazines are following us [on @KayBeauty]?” she enquires briskly. It’s been about 12 hours since she announced the beauty line’s Instagram handle, and already the account’s amassed 46k followers.

This story is from the November 2019 edition of GQ India.

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This story is from the November 2019 edition of GQ India.

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