Entertainment

Walt Disney’s animated Zootopia 2 racked up an estimated US$556 million in global ticket sales over the US Thanksgiving weekend, providing a strong kickoff to Hollywood’s crucial holiday moviegoing season.

Nearly half of the film’s box office receipts from Wednesday through yesterday came from China, bucking a trend of Hollywood movies finishing behind locally made films.

The US$272 million tally made Zootopia 2Hollywood’s highest-grossing animated movie in China, surpassing a record set by the first Zootopia in 2016.

Also in theaters, Universal Pictures’ movie musical Wicked: For Good claimed US$92.2 million worldwide in its second weekend, bringing its total to US$393.3 million after 10 days.

The fervour for the two films provided welcome news for movie theater owners who hope audiences will pack cinemas through Christmas, the second-busiest time of the year for moviegoing. 

Annual box office sales have yet to recover to the pre-pandemic levels seen in 2019.

Zootopia 2 collected US$156 million of its worldwide total in the United States and Canada, making it the leader on domestic box office charts. 

The movie, set in a city of animals, tells the story of a bunny police officer, voiced by Ginnifer Goodwin, and her fox partner, voiced by Jason Bateman.

“It’s a proud moment for Disney Animation and all of us at Disney, not to mention a great way to start the holiday season,” Disney Entertainment Co-Chairman Alan Bergman said in a statement.

Year-to-date domestic ticket sales reached US$7.8 billion, up 1.2 per cent from a year ago but 23 per cent shy of 2019, according to data from Comscore.

Thanksgiving weekend sales are expected to rank among the top five of all time in the United States and Canada when final numbers come in today, said Paul Dergarabedian, Comscore’s head of marketplace trends. Coming releases include James Cameron’s third Avatar film just before Christmas.

“Think about how many people were in theaters over the past week being exposed to theater marketing and trailers,” Dergarabedian said. “Hopefully that creates the momentum that can give us a really solid home stretch of the year.”

(Source - Reuters)

Netflix recently released the first look at Man vs Baby, a new comedy starring Rowan Atkinson. This show is a follow-up to his 2022 hit series, Man vs Bee, and it is set to premiere on December 11, 2025.

Atkinson plays Trevor Bingley again, a man who always ends up in trouble. In the first show, he tried to protect a big house but spent the whole time fighting a tiny bee. This time, Trevor just wants a quiet Christmas, but nothing goes the way he hopes.

According to Netflix’s story summary, “After a job looking after a high-tech mansion ended in disaster thanks to an irritating insect, Trevor Bingley has left the stressful world of housesitting for the quieter life of a school caretaker. That is, until a tempting offer to watch a luxury London penthouse over Christmas proves too hard to resist.”

But his peace is short-lived. “On the last day of term, when no one comes to collect the Baby Jesus from the school nativity, Trevor finds himself with another undersized and very unexpected companion,” the description continues. “With a penthouse to protect and a baby to burp, will Trevor be able to have the calm Christmas he hopes for, or will everything fall apart?”

New photos show Atkinson feeding two babies at once, standing beside a huge Christmas tree, and serving Christmas dinner. The show also stars Alanah Bloor as Maddy, Trevor’s daughter, as per The Mirror. She replaces India Fowler, who played the role before.

The four-part series was written by Atkinson and Will Davies, who also worked together on Johnny English. It is directed by David Kerr and produced by HouseSitter Productions.

Netflix says the show is “a lighthearted and family-friendly holiday story about responsibility, chaos, and laughter.” Atkinson, best known for Mr. Bean and Love Actually, brings his classic silent humor and expressive style back to screens, just in time for Christmas.

(Source - Hindustan Times)

Veteran Bollywood legend Dharmendra has died at the age of 89, media outlets confirmed on Monday. The actor passed away in Mumbai, only weeks after being discharged from Breach Candy Hospital, where he had been receiving medical care.

Dharmendra had been admitted earlier this month and was briefly placed on life support, according to sources familiar with his health. He was released from the hospital on November 12, with doctors reporting he was stable and arrangements made for continued care at home.

Born on December 8, the celebrated actor would have turned 90 next month. He had remained under close medical supervision in recent weeks.

Over a career spanning six decades, Dharmendra appeared in more than 300 films and became one of the most influential figures in Hindi cinema. He made his acting debut in 1960 with Dil Bhi Tera Hum Bhi Tere and went on to deliver numerous iconic performances in some of Bollywood’s biggest hits.

He most recently appeared in the 2024 film Teri Baaton Mein Aisa Uljha Jiya, alongside Shahid Kapoor and Kriti Sanon. His upcoming project, Ikkis, directed by Sriram Raghavan, had been highly anticipated.

Honored with the Padma Bhushan in 2012, Dharmendra remains remembered as one of the most beloved and enduring stars in Indian film history.

Anne-Marie doesn't play when it comes to baby names.

The “Ciao Adios” singer revealed that she and husband of three years Slowthai have given their 5-month-old baby boy a very unique moniker: Forever Sugar.

“His name is Forever,” she shared on This Morning Oct. 14. “Sugar is his middle name.”

And the infant’s name has an interesting origin story behind it.

“I had the diabetes thing that you get when you’re pregnant,” the 35-year-old shared. “So I thought, ‘What a perfect middle name.'”

Nine percent of all pregnant people in the U.S. are diagnosed with gestational diabetes each year, according to the American Diabetes Association. Like with Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes, it causes high blood sugar, which can affect the pregnancy and the baby’s health.

As for his first name Forever, Anne-Marie—who also shares daughter Seven, 19 months, with Slowthai (real name Tyron Kaymone Frampton)—explained that it came from her side of the family.

“My nan used to sign off every card with ‘always and forever,’” she said. “All the time. And now my mum does it and my sister does it, and I think 'Forever’ is just—it’s just a cool name.”

And Forever Sugar is certainly the apple of his older sister’s eye.

“She treats him like he’s her age,” Anne-Marie laughed. “So she doesn’t really get that he’s still super tiny.”

Although Seven can be a tad aggressive with Forever Sugar, the “2002” singer noted it is only because she “gets really excited.”

“They love each other,” she gushed, “stare at each other.”

And while having two kids under two wasn’t totally planned, it was something Anne-Marie was sort of preparing for.

“To be honest I do like psychics and I see a lot of psychics,” she explained. “And they all—all of them—said, ‘You’re gonna have babies either really close together or twins.’”

So when it happened, she thought, “OK, I think I’m OK with this.”

“And it is a beautiful thing,” Anne-Marie continued, “but it’s definitely hard.”

Of course, the “Rockabye” singer also took a moment to brag about her baby girl, saying, “she’s beautiful.”

“The most beautiful little thing,” she shared. “She makes me cry.”

For a look at more unique baby names, keep reading.

(Source - eonline.com)

Variety reported on Thursday that the late “Black Panther” star will be honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame by the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce on November 20.

Chadwick passed away in 2020 after a four-year fight with colon cancer.

Before his death, Chadwick became a beloved figure to Marvel fans after joining the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Black Panther in 2016, making an appearance as T’Challa in “Captain America: Civil War.”

He went on to star in his own Marvel movie, the successful “Black Panther” in 2018, before joining the phenomenal “Avengers: Infinity War” and “Avengers: Endgame.”

He has also starred in “21 Bridges” as Andre Davis, “Da 5 Bloods” as Stormin’ Norman. He also joined the cast of “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” as Levee.

He was supposed to reprise his role as “Black Panther” in the sequel movie in 2022.

(Source - GMA Integrated News)

The 2025 Nobel Prize in literature has been awarded to László Krasznahorkai, a Hungarian novelist who said his dark and difficult novels aim to examine reality “to the point of madness.”

Announcing the prize at a ceremony in Stockholm, Sweden, on Thursday, the Nobel Committee praised Krasznahorkai “for his compelling and visionary oeuvre that, in the midst of apocalyptic terror, reaffirms the power of art.”

When only a handful of his works were translated into English, the literary critic James Wood wrote that Krasznahorkai’s books were once “passed around like rare currency.” That has since changed, and the Nobel Committee said the award recognized a body of work that has won widespread acclaim and “is characterized by absurdism and grotesque excess.”

Born in Gyula, Hungary, in 1954 – two years before the Hungarian Revolution that was met with brutal repression by the Soviet Union – Krasznahorkai has previously said he grew up “in a predicament and a country where a person accursed with a heightened aesthetic and moral sensitivity like me simply cannot survive.”

Dubbed by the late American essayist Susan Sontag the “contemporary master of the apocalypse,” Krasznahorkai’s novels – often set in shivering Central European villages – depict townsfolk searching for meaning in symbols scattered across a godless world.

In “The Melancholy of Resistance,” published in 1989, a travelling circus arrives in a shabby town, bringing with it only the carcass of a giant whale. The whale feels like a potent symbol – a potential nod to Herman Melville’s “Moby Dick,” or even to Jonah being swallowed by a huge fish in the Old Testament – but Krasznahorkai’s meaning remains obscure.

Instead, one of the villagers, Mrs Eszter, sees the arrival of the circus as a chance to create chaos. The “mysterious and menacing spectacle sets extreme forces in motion, prompting the spread of both violence and vandalism,” the committee said. Mrs Eszter then blames the disorder on “sinister forces,” moving to stamp out the violence and claim power over the town. Within two weeks, Mrs Eszter has shaped the town in her image, “swept away the old and established the new,” Krasznahorkai writes.

While the novel reads like an allegory for the rise of fascism, it is not clear if there is a lesson Krasznahorkai wants his readers to glean from it. His novels often resist neat moral solutions. In an interview this year, he stated flatly that “art is humanity’s extraordinary response to the sense of lostness that is our fate” – and it is not, one might presume, advice about what to do with that “lostness.”

The first thing that strikes a reader of Krasnahorkai is the sentences: long, serpentine, self-revising. The novelist once said that the period “doesn’t belong to human beings – it belongs to God.” The result, as his translator George Szirtes says, is a “slow lava-flow of narrative.”

While the world of his novels is often sparse, the sentences are dense as granite. In his 1985 debut novel “Sátántangó,” in which villagers try to decipher whether the new arrival Irimiás is a con-man or a savior, a sentence describing a sunrise runs for the best part of a page:

“…to the east, swift as memory, the sky brightens, scarlet and pale blue and leans against the undulating horizon, to be followed by the sun, like a beggar daily painting up to his spot on the temple steps, full of heartbreak and misery, ready to establish the world of shadows, to separate the trees one from the other, to raise, out of the freezing, confusing homogeneity of night in which they seem to have been trapped like flies in a web, a clearly defined earth and sky with distinct animals and men, the darkness still in flight at the edge of things, somewhere on the far side on the western horizon, where its countless terrors vanish one by one like a desperate, confused, defeated army.”

“Sátántangó” was made into a film by the Hungarian director Béla Tarr in 1994, with whom Krasznahorkai has collaborated on various screenplays. Despite its seven-hour run-time, Sontag said the film was “enthralling for every minute.”

Last year, the Nobel went to Han Kang, a South Korean author who was lauded for her “intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.”

The 2023 prize was awarded to Jon Fosse, a Norwegian novelist and playwright whose “radical reduction of language and dramatic action expresses the most powerful human emotions of anxiety and powerlessness in the simplest terms,” the committee said.

The prize carries a cash award of 11 million Swedish kronor ($1 million).

(Source - CNN)

Squid Game star O Yeong-Su has been acquitted of sexual misconduct charges by a court in South Korea.

The 81-year-old was charged in 2022 with sexually assaulting a woman twice. The allegations said that he hugged the woman and kissed her on the cheek against her will.

Mr O was found guilty in 2024 and given an eight-month suspended prison sentence, but said he would appeal against the verdict.

On Tuesday, a court overturned his sentence, saying he had undergone classes on sexual violence and suggesting that the alleged victim’s memory may have been “distorted”, considering how long ago the incident occurred.

The alleged assaults took place in 2017 when Mr O was staying in a rural area for a theatre performance.

The alleged victim filed a complaint against Mr O in 2021, but the case was closed in April the same year. The prosecution later reopened the investigation “at the request of the victim”, according to Yonhap agency.

In a statement reported by local media outlets, the Suwon District Court said there was “doubt” as to whether Mr O had committed the assault.

“There is a possibility that the victim’s memory has been distorted over time, and when there is doubt... the defendant must be given the benefit of the doubt”.

However, the statement also went on to say that it was possible Mr O had committed assault, as he had apologised to the victim.

The alleged victim later spoke out against the verdict, saying it would not “invalidate the truth or erase the pain I have suffered”.

“Despite today’s ruling, I will continue to speak the truth to the very end,” she said in a statement released through women’s rights organisation Womenlink.

Womenlink also criticised the ruling, saying they were “outraged by a ruling that once again conceals sexual violence in the theatre world”.

It is not yet clear if the prosecution will appeal.

Speaking to local media outlets after the court ruling, Mr O said he had “gratitude to the court for its wise judgement”.

Mr O rose to international fame after starring in Squid Game, a dystopian drama which sees people competing in deadly versions of traditional children’s games.

In 2022, he became the first South Korean actor to win a Golden Globe award for best supporting actor in a series, after his performance in the first season of the chart-topping Netflix thriller.

(Source - BBC)

Sri Lankan fashion designer Chathuri Samaraweera, the Founder and Artistic Director of the “ANAYA” Collection, has etched her name in history as the first Sri Lankan to showcase a collection at Paris Fashion Week 2025.

Unveiling her Spring/Summer 2026 womenswear line, titled “Balearic Dreaming,” Samaraweera captivated an audience of more than 100 industry insiders and fashion partners at an official sideline event held at the prestigious Hotel Le Marois in Paris.

Drawing inspiration from the tranquil charm of the Balearic Islands, her collection blended soft blues, rose-gold hues, and lively ocean-inspired tones, reflecting her signature sophistication and effortless elegance.

The showcase marked a defining moment for Sri Lanka’s presence in global fashion, spotlighting a designer whose artistry and imagination have elevated her to the world stage.

In a congratulatory message, the Embassy of Sri Lanka in France described Samaraweera’s milestone as a “proud moment for the Sri Lankan fashion industry,” stating on Facebook:

“Chathuri’s journey from Sri Lanka to the global stage is a testament to her vision, creativity, and dedication.”

The global girl group Katseye say they have endured a wave of online death threats and harassment since their debut last year — a dark side to their rapid rise to pop stardom.

The six-member collective, recently nominated for Best New Artist at the Grammy Awards, told BBC News that the threats have at times extended to their families, weighing heavily on their mental health.

“I tell myself not to care, but when a thousand people are sending you death threats, it’s jarring,” said Lara Raj, one of the group’s vocalists. “Even if you know it’s unlikely to happen, it’s still heavy.”

Raj, a 20-year-old American of Tamil Indian and Sri Lankan descent, has also faced racist abuse and was even falsely reported to U.S. immigration authorities. The experience pushed her to delete her Twitter (X) account entirely.

“I realised I’m not the audience for other people’s opinions,” she said.

The group did not go into detail about the threats, but such behaviour is increasingly common in fan communities. Other artists, including Chappell Roan, Muna, and Doja Cat, have publicly criticized fans for harassment, spreading misinformation, and invading privacy.

Fellow Katseye member Sophia Laforteza said the band accepts that fame comes with scrutiny but stressed that “it doesn’t change the fact that we’re human.”

Raj also highlighted the sexist nature of online criticism, where female artists are objectified and ranked by appearance or skill.

“People see us as women to rate — how we look, sing, or dance — and then assign us a score. It’s dystopian,” she said.

Despite the negativity, Katseye’s success has been remarkable. Their second EP, Beautiful Chaos, debuted at No. 2 on the U.S. album charts, driven by the viral hit Gnarly and its follow-up Gabriella, written by Charli XCX.

A Gap advertisement featuring the group went viral in August, gaining more than 400 million views and over 8 billion impressions online. The band went on to win Best Performance at the MTV Awards, and just last week, they made history as only the third girl group ever nominated for Best New Artist at the Grammys, following SWV and Wilson Phillips.

The members — aged between 17 and 22 — represent a truly global mix of cultures and backgrounds:

• Daniela Avanzini, a Venezuelan-Cuban American from Atlanta
• Lara Raj, an Indian-Sri Lankan American from New York
• Manon Bannerman, a Ghanaian-Italian from Zurich
• Megan Skiendiel, a Chinese-Singaporean American from Honolulu
• Sophia Laforteza, from Manila, Philippines
• Yoonchae Jeung, from Seoul, South Korea

They were chosen through The Debut: Dream Academy, a reality competition created by HYBE (home to BTS and LE SSERAFIM) and Geffen Records. The show narrowed thousands of applicants down to 20 trainees who underwent a two-year intensive program of vocal and dance training before the final six were selected as Katseye.

Their breakout single Gnarly, released in April, divided critics but exploded online, amassing over half a billion streams. The New York Times even called it “the future of K-pop.”

“We knew it would shock people,” said Avanzini. “That was exciting — we wanted to give them something thrilling.”

Now, as Katseye continues to rise, the members say they’re determined to use their platform to celebrate diversity and confidence.

“We’re proud that our group represents so many cultures,” said Bannerman. “We want girls everywhere to feel proud of who they are.”

Raj echoed that sentiment with a message to young artists from underrepresented backgrounds:

“Do it. Don’t hold back. Our skin, our culture — that’s our power. Use it and own it.”

Taylor Swift’s latest album, The Life of a Showgirl, has already secured the UK’s biggest opening week of 2025, after selling 304,000 copies since Friday.

The total eclipses the first-week sales of her last two studio albums: 2024’s The Tortured Poets Departent (270,000 copies) and 2022’s Midnights (204,000).

With just three days counted, she has achieved the UK’s biggest first-week sales since Ed Sheeran’s Divide sold 672,000 copies in 2017.

The star is also on track to have the biggest-selling album of the year overall. The current title holder is Sabrina Carpenter, who appears on Life of a Showgirl’s title track. Her Short N’ Sweet album has shifted 444,000 copies since January.

Swift has also broken records in the US, where she notched up 2.7 million sales on Friday alone.

That marks Swift’s biggest sales week ever, and the second-largest sales week for any album since 1991, when modern chart methodology began.

Only Adele’s 25 has done better - selling 3.378 million copies in its first week in 2015.

The Life of a Showgirl has also smashed the US record for the most vinyl albums sold in a single week.

Swifties snapped up 1.2 million copies on wax - at least in part because the star released eight collectable variants of the record.

The previous single-week record was also set by Swift when her last album, The Tortured Poets Department, sold 859,000 copies on vinyl in its first week.

Swift’s sales figures are all the more impressive because album sales elsewhere in the industry are in a state of perpetual decline.

In the UK, only one other album has shifted more than 100,000 copies in a week this year - Sam Fender’s People Watching.

Ed Sheeran’s latest, Play, sold 67,000 units when it came out last month.

During the summer, two albums (Reneé Rapp’s Bite Me and the Oasis compilation Time Flies) topped the charts with fewer than 20,000 sales.

Not content with chart domination, however, Swift topped the cinema box office this weekend, selling $46m (£34m) in tickets for her 89-minute film Taylor Swift: The Official Release Party Of A Showgirl.

Essentially an album launch event, the screenings included the premiere of her music video for The Fate Of Ophelia, behind-the-scenes footage from the making of the album, and Swift’s commentary on the songs.

Mixed reviews Swift’s 12th album was written and recorded during stolen moments on the European leg of her Eras Tour last summer.

It captures the star as she falls in love with American Footballer Travis Kelce; interspersed with cautionary - and sometimes catty - tales about the music industry.

Critical reviews have been mixed. Variety magazine called it “contagiously joyful” while the Financial Times said it “lacked sparkle”.

Speaking on BBC Radio 2’s Breakfast Show with Scott Mills, the star debunked rumours that it would be her last album.

Asked if she planned to retire for a life of domestic bliss, as some fans have suggested, the singer laughed: “That’s a shockingly offensive thing to say.

“It’s not why people get married - so that they can quit their job.”

(Source-BBC)

Sam Rivers, the bass player and founding member of the metal band Limp Bizkit, which was one of nu-metal’s best-selling acts in the late 1990s and is credited with bringing a unique mix of heavy metal, hip-hop and punk into the mainstream, has died at 48.

The band confirmed Mr. Rivers’s death in a statement on social media on Saturday. The statement did not provide a cause, nor did it say where and when he died.

The band described Mr. Rivers as “the pulse beneath every song, the calm in the chaos, the soul in the sound.”

Mr. Rivers was born on Sept. 2, 1977. He began playing music as a teenager in Jacksonville, Fla., before he was scouted by Fred Durst, Limp Bizkit’s lead vocalist.

Mr. Durst, who at the time was 25, had a vision for a band with a specific style and sound, he said in a video he posted on Instagram on Sunday.

He came upon Mr. Rivers at a bar in Jacksonville and was so taken by his performance that “everything disappeared besides his gift,” Mr. Durst said.

After the show, he pitched Mr. Rivers on his band. Mr. Rivers responded quickly, he recalled, saying: “Killer, I’m in. Let’s do it.”

The two started “jamming, messing around,” before starting to look for more potential members, Mr. Durst said.

Mr. Rivers suggested that they recruit the jazz drummer John Otto. Wes Borland, a guitarist, joined the group to form Limp Bizkit in 1994. DJ Lethal, who acted as both a producer and a disc jockey, joined two years later.

The band’s 1999 album, “Significant Other,” was nominated for a Grammy for best rock album.

Mr. Rivers “had this ability to pull this beautiful sadness out of the bass that I’ve never heard,” Mr. Durst said on Instagram.

Information about Mr. Rivers’s survivors was not immediately available.

In an interview for “Raising Hell,” Jon Wiederhorn’s 2020 book about the lives of top metal musicians, Mr. Rivers said he struggled with his health because of excessive drinking.

He took a break from the band in 2015 and returned in 2018, ahead of the release of its sixth album, “Still Sucks,” in October 2021.

This summer, Limp Bizkit was on the lineup of the Reading Festival in England, where the band proved that they “can still recapture the intensity they had during the turn of the millennium,” the British publication NME said.

The group was set to begin a South American tour on Nov. 29.

“It’s so tragic that he’s not here right now,” Mr. Durst said in the Instagram video, at times holding back tears.

The group, he said, “rocked stadiums together, we’ve been around the world together, shared so many moments together.”

(NYTimes.com)

By Lakmal Gajabahu, Fashion Critic

There is a particular courage required to make fashion more than clothing — to make it a narrative, a provocation, even a cultural archive. Venuka Wickramaarachchi, one of Sri Lanka’s most versatile fashion and costume designers, has been quietly building such a narrative for more than fifteen years. With collections that have crossed stages in London, Milan, and Kazakhstan, alongside award-winning work for cinema and pageantry, he is carving out a voice that is both unmistakably Sri Lankan and unflinchingly global.

London: Tradition Meets Technology

At London Graduate Fashion Week, Wickramaarachchi’s “Transcend Through Historic Elegance” demonstrated a rare duality: garments rooted in Sri Lanka’s cultural memory, yet sculpted through modern 3D techniques. The collection felt like a dialogue between past and future — as though Kandyan motifs had been reimagined by a digital artisan. The architectural silhouettes invited comparisons with Iris van Herpen’s experiments in technology-driven couture, but with a warmth of storytelling that remained uniquely his own.

Milan: Fashion as Protest

In Milan, at the AQUA Fashion Show hosted by Ferrari Fashion School, his focus shifted to the environment. Rising sea levels — a looming threat for island nations like Sri Lanka — became both theme and metaphor. Flowing fabrics suggested fragility, while structured lines hinted at resilience. The collection was less about beauty in the conventional sense, and more about urgency. Like Stella McCartney’s sustainable campaigns, Wickramaarachchi’s Milan showcase reminded audiences that fashion can be both aesthetic and activist.

Kazakhstan: A Living Timeline

Perhaps his most audacious work came in Kazakhstan’s Aspara Fashion Festival, where he presented 23 national costumes narrating Sri Lanka’s history. Here was spectacle, yes, but also scholarship. Each design became a chapter: from the grandeur of ancient kingdoms to the influences of colonial trade. At times the scale tipped toward theatrical pageantry — inevitable when one attempts to condense centuries into garments — but the overall impression was profound. Wickramaarachchi had transformed the runway into a moving museum, a feat rarely attempted and even more rarely achieved.

Cinema and the Art of Authenticity

Parallel to his runway work, Wickramaarachchi’s reputation as a costume designer has been cemented in Sri Lankan cinema. Films such as Kusa Paba, Paththini, and Vijayaba Kollaya bear his signature — meticulous research, historical accuracy, and visual grandeur. His accolades, including the Lux Film Award for Best Costume Designer and the Presidential Special Jury Award, are not mere decorations; they signal an artist trusted to shape national stories through fabric. Like the great Eiko Ishioka, whose cinematic costumes became part of visual history, Wickramaarachchi approaches costume not as accessory, but as narrative itself.

Cultural Diplomacy Through Pageantry

The designer’s role as cultural ambassador is most evident in his pageant costumes, worn on global stages by Sri Lankan representatives at Miss International, Miss World Sri Lanka, Mrs. Sri Lanka World, and Mister Global. These are not gowns designed for fleeting applause; they are symbols. Rich in motifs, dramatic in execution, they assert Sri Lanka’s place in a fashion conversation often dominated by Western aesthetics. In this, Wickramaarachchi echoes designers like Guo Pei — transforming cultural pride into haute spectacle.

Diamaté and the Future

With the launch of Diamaté by Venuka in 2024, he entered a new phase. The brand, initially online, reflects his philosophy of versatility, sustainability, and global relevance. The Clásico line, crafted entirely from natural fabrics, demonstrated a willingness to challenge the dominance of synthetics in fast fashion. Plans for a flagship boutique in Sri Lanka, alongside global expansion, suggest ambition matched by infrastructure. Importantly, Diamaté also doubles as a training ground, with Wickramaarachchi mentoring younger designers — a reminder that cultural leadership is not just about personal success, but about legacy.

Forward Momentum

The horizon looks busy. Another film featuring his costumes will release at the end of this year, with a second already in preparation. More national costumes are being developed for global pageants. Diamaté is preparing for its international debut, while sustainability remains central to his mission. Each project reinforces his role not just as a designer, but as a strategist for Sri Lanka’s cultural identity in the global fashion ecosystem.

Venuka Wickramaarachchi’s work cannot be reduced to a single discipline. He is at once a couturier, a costume historian, a sustainability advocate, and a cultural diplomat. His designs may occasionally veer toward theatrical excess, but therein lies their strength: they refuse invisibility. In an industry often preoccupied with the disposable, Wickramaarachchi offers permanence — garments that tell stories, garments that remember, garments that matter.