Actress Davika “Mai” Hoorne did a turn at the Cannes Film Festival last week, appearing in a gorgeous gown as part of the annual promotion staged by the makers of Magnum ice cream. People wanted to know who made her outfit, but she wasn’t quite as forthcoming as she could have been.
Magnum’s Thai ambassador later posted a thank-you to all her sponsors on Instagram – and didn’t say a word about where her dress came from.
“Is that one of mine?” Polpat “Moo” Asavaprapha asked sarcastically in a post on the same network. “I just found out about this today!”
It was indeed one of Moo’s. He’s the founder and creative wizard at fashion brand Asava and he made the gown Mai was wearing in France, part of his spring-summer Breakfast at Tiffany’s collection.
So he was a little miffed when Mai went online and thanked everybody but him. He ended his snarky comments with a strawberry icon, which in Thai indicates someone’s lying. You might say May was “lying” by omission.
Moo’s pals in the fashion industry piled on in their responses, some adding their own strawberry emoticons, others posting photos of strawberry-flavoured food and drinks and still others just typing the initial “M”, as in Mindless Mai, presumably.
“There’s competition in every industry,” Moo commented further, “but at the end of the day everything depends on how you behave. You should respect the people working with you. Your true value in the workplace depends on the quality of your work and your personal qualities. Just being famous means nothing, because fame will disappear one day.
“As a professional you have to respect everybody on the team, from the makeup artist and stylist to the costume designer,” his lecture continued. “A professional should be punctual, polite, well-behaved and know how to thank others. The most important thing is to be sincere.”
Moo put in a plug for Sinjai “Nok” Plengpanich, as if in contrast to a certain other actress. “She always arrives early and ready to work. If I ask whether she likes an outfit, she always says, ‘I can wear anything Moo likes’, and that’s a real honour to me. And she always returns the dresses on time, dry-cleaned and perfectly neat.
“Respect is the key to earning respect. No matter who you are or what you’re doing, you have to respect everybody in your life. We should say thank you every time somebody does something for us, even housekeepers. You can teach people how to be a professional, but things like this are quite hard to teach.”
The designer ended by saying, rather bafflingly, “Sometimes silence is golden.”
Yes it is, and now that he’s done, here’s Mai, saying she simply forgot to thank Asava and Moo. She apologised and even edited her original Instagram message to include Moo.
And thus ends our coverage of Cannes 2016.
This source first appeared on The Nation Life.