ALL RISE

Slowly easing into several new roles, Maja Salvador shows us how women can go beyond conventions and still rule

- BAM ABELLON

On a rainy Monday morning, inside an edifice that evokes old Philippine houses, Maja Salvador sits solemnly on the makeup chair. Once in a while, she’d chat with her glam team, but often, she’s locked on her phone.

We are all in the middle of the busy city of Manila, and in the room with us are fabled creations of the late National Artist Salvacion Lim Higgins, also known by the endearment Slim, an acronym of her name. Slim is the only Filipino designer who made it to the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. The couturier’s genius arose from her ability to unify classic pieces, like the Filipiniana, into ideas that are unconventional, unpredictable, and extraordinary.

It’s judicious, then, that the actress of almost two decades, who is sitting still on the makeup chair, is about to give life again to the dreamlike gowns in our midst. Lasting and, most recently, unconventional in her career choices, Maja Salvador often surprises her audience, and it’s refreshingly hard to predict what she’ll do next.

STILL AND STABLE

Being still is a rare state for someone like Maja, a self-confessed workaholic. But right now, this is exactly how she needs to be while checking up on other ongoing photo shoots fronted by artists from Crown Artist Management (or Crown), a talent management agency Maja co-founded with her fiancé, entrepreneur Rambo Nuñez, and her longtime friend, former ABS-CBN regional executive Mikki Gonzalez. They launched Crown in March of 2021.