Alicia Silverstone, the new Kamiseta Girl

Who is the next Kamiseta girl?

Is she clueless?

Or could she be a bat of a girl?

Hmmmm....

This teaser has intrigued motorists who have read it on billboards along metro highways, and Kamiseta shoppers who have seen it in Kamiseta stores nationwide.

Finally, the suspense is over–and definitely worth the wait.

The new Kamiseta girl is– tah-dah!– no less than Hollywood actress Alicia Silverstone, star of the films Clueless, The Crush, Batman & Robin, and Excess Baggage, among others, and now co-starring with Kathleen Turner and Jason Biggs in Broadway’s Midnight Cowboy.

Behind the cameras, Alicia is the executive producer and the voice of the lead character Sharon Spitz in the Fox Family Network’s hit animated TV series Braceface, for which she has received an Emmy nomination.

For Kamiseta president/CEO Gonzalo "Gunn" Roque III, getting Alicia to be Kamiseta endorser is nothing less than a dream come true. It’s also a coup of sorts–it’s the first time a 100% Filipino-owned company has obtained the services of a major Hollywood star.

The dream began for Gunn when he watched Alicia in the movie Clueless. "I immediately wanted to get her for Kamiseta," Gunn says. "The way she portrayed (the Beverly Hills fashion-loving teener) Cher, I knew she was on her way to becoming a fashion icon. To me she embodied Kamiseta’s motto which is ‘It’s fun being a girl’."

Alicia follows in the footsteps of the equally beautiful Cojuangco sisters Maimai and China, whose charm and appeal as endorsers helped Kamiseta grow into 28 branches nationwide.

"Kamiseta was receiving a lot of requests for franchises abroad via e-mail," Gunn says. "They came from as far as Switzerland, Japan, France, the US. These businessmen had seen Kamiseta while they were in the Philippines and I thought, ‘They aren’t crazy to want to invest if they did not believe in the product’."

Though he hasn’t acceded–yet–to having a franchise abroad, the requests confirmed what Gunn had believed all along–that Kamiseta is a world-class brand Filipinos can rightfully be proud of.

With this long-term goal of making Kamiseta an international brand, Gunn pursued the 25-year-old Alicia Silverstone, leaving no stone unturned, so to speak, in the process.

"Suntok sa buwan," Gunn recalls his goal with a smile, "but my mindset was I wasn’t going to take ‘no’ for an answer."

Months of painstaking research, meetings and preparations with Alicia’s manager Caroline Kessler, plus Alicia’s publicist and agent, among others, preceded Gunn’s first meeting with Alicia, also her pictorial day.

When the day finally arrived, Gunn was in for a pleasant surprise: Alicia turned out to be as charming, as nice, and as sweet as she had come across on the film that had endeared her to Gunn.

"We started the shoot at 10 a.m. and ended at 11 p.m.," recalls Gunn. "We had to shoot indoors in the studio of British photographer Paul Westlake, who has shot for top clothes brands abroad, because it was winter and the temperature was 6 C.

"Alicia looked just like an ordinary girl: She had no makeup, she was just wearing a jacket, jeans and a Tshirt. She stands about 5’5" tall and weighs about 110 lbs. She wasn’t a diva at all. She was bubbly and enthusiastic, and she’d say ‘thank you’ for even the littlest of things anyone did for her.

"Her dog, a mutt named Samson, was with her throughout the shoot and it was so well-behaved. There was a lot of food around but the dog ate only when Alicia herself handed it food!

"Alicia was very professional, too. She never complained. She modelled 10 sets of clothes but we had to stop a lot (for adjustments). The pictorial took us 11 hours because all the persons involved were perfectionists–from the photographer to makeup artist Kim Carillo, who primps up Madonna and Tina Turner; to the hairstylist, Mitch Barry, who does Elizabeth Taylor’s hair; and stylist Nathalie, a former assistant editor at Marie Claire magazine.

"‘Do you want me to pose this way?’ Alicia would ask. She did not even have an alalay (factotum) with her.

"She would say how nice the Kamiseta clothes were, and at shoot’s end, she asked me, ‘Can I keep the clothes?’ and I said, ‘Sure! Of course!’"

At shoot’s end, Alicia approached Gunn. "I hate to see left-overs," she sweetly said of the food on the buffet spread. "Is it okay if I take these home? These can feed my dogs for three days." She added that she would donate the money she would be saving as a result to charity.

"Thank you for everything!" Alicia gushed when the shoot was over, kissing Gunn and his wife Cris on the cheeks.

Gunn will never forget that day, of course.

"Alicia was awesome," he ends. "So sweet. So cool!"