The force is with Kamiseta girl Natalie Portman

The force – to borrow from the classic Star Wars line – is now with Episode I: The Phantom Menace and Episode II: Attack of the Clones star Natalie Portman as it is with Filipino apparel brand Kamiseta which has always been guided by the credo, "It’s fun being a girl."

Which makes one wonder – how much fun can a girl really have?

Well, if you’re 21-year-old Natalie Portman, having fun is really quite simple. First, you become a straight-A student during your grade school years, after which you finish high school in Long Island with honors. Then you major in Psychology in no less than Harvard, all the while maintaining a movie career that propels you to the top of Hollywood’s young A-listers. Most importantly, you just remain being yourself, keeping humble even as movie watchers gush that your finely chiselled features, regal bearing and charisma make you the Audrey Hepburn of your generation. It helps to learn four languages (English, Hebrew, and some French and Japanese) as well. And oh, being the newest Kamiseta image model (after sisters China and Mai Mai Cojuangco and Alicia Silverstone) makes for loads of fun, too.

"When I first read Natalie’s resumé and saw her portfolio," recalls Kamiseta head honcho Gonzalo "Gunn" Roque III, "I was starstruck. Natalie has achieved so much for her age. She has already achieved iconic status."

Gunn and his wife Chris met Natalie for the first time last March for her pictorial for Kamiseta which lasted for 10 hours. Natalie was photographed by Alek Keshishian, the director of Madonna’s docu-movie Truth or Dare. Alek, who is Natalie’s favorite photographer, has shot pictures of Natalie since she was a kid. Natalie had specifically requested Alek to photograph her for the Kamiseta pictorial.

"She’s around 5’2" tall," Gunn relates, "and the moment you see her, you will be immediately struck by her beauty, especially her eyes. They’re really prominent and you can’t help but notice them."

Gunn remembers the petite, sweater-clad Natalie breezing into New York’s Milk Studios without any makeup, introducing herself and greeting the Roques beso-beso style. "Natalie told me," Gunn shares, "that her grandmother’s nurse is a Filipina. She really praised the way the nurse took care of her grandmother."

"She was very professional throughout the shoot," Gunn recalls. "She would ask questions like ‘How do you want me to look?’ or ‘What angles should be taken?’ When I’d look at the polaroids and she saw me furrow my eyebrows, even without me saying anything she’d say, ‘Let’s do it again. This is our job, we will do it the way you want it’." Natalie would not settle for anything less than what she felt would be satisfactory to all those present.

The remarkable thing about Natalie, Gunn notes, is that "While she earns millions per movie, Natalie is having fun; she is very young and she is having fun. She has passed up on movie offers – and even endorsements – if she feels they will be something she won’t have fun doing."

This is why Gunn considers it an achievement for Kamiseta to have gotten Natalie Portman’s nod. "Kamiseta has always been shooting for the stars," Gunn explained. "In everything we do, we try to outdo ourselves. We sent our clothes to Natalie and the fact that she said ‘yes’ to Kamiseta shows that the Philippines can produce wearable fashion that can catch the fancy of Hollywood superstars."

The choice of Natalie as Kamiseta image model, Gunn adds, couldn’t have been more ideal. "Natalie Portman is sweet, down-to-earth and smart," observes Gunn. "She has global appeal. She is beautiful, well-educated and well-brought up."

The Jerusalem-born Natalie is an only child. Her father is an obstetrician-gynecologist specializing in fertility. Her parents visited Natalie during the Kamiseta pictorial, just as her boyfriend did during the lunch break, when vegan dishes were served to the vegetarian actress.

"Just to show you how professional she is," Gunn continues, "she and her boyfriend, who dropped by with two guys, joked with each other during the lunch break. But right after that, he and his two friends left and Natalie immediately went back to work." Asked for more details about Natalie’s boyfriend, Gunn shares, "He’s about 6’0" tall, Caucasian, clean-cut and about her age. He’s her schoolmate at Harvard."

During the pictorial, Natalie would point to the Kamiseta clothes she particularly liked and would say, "Oh I like this one, oh I like that." It pleased the Roques immensely when Natalie said, "Wow, I’m endorsing something I really like!"

In a way, it isn’t surprising that Kamiseta caught Natalie’s fancy. Through the years, Kamiseta has successfully maintained the standards that have hauled for the brand a slew of awards, the latest of which are the 2002 National Consumers Excellence Award for Best Garments Brand; the 2002 Top Female Apparel Brand; the 2002 Most Promising Filipino Franchise of the Year; and the 2003 Outstanding Asia-Pacific Achievers-Top Female Apparel Retailer.

Does the choice of Natalie Portman, as the choice of Alicia Silverstone before her, point to the inevitable "globalization" of Kamiseta?

"During Alicia’s time we received a lot of inquiries for franchises abroad," Gunn shares. "And though it would be easy to simply sell our clothes in outlets abroad, we want something more than that. We want Kamiseta to be sold in shops that will stand out on their own, that will have their own identity, so that a Filipino brand will be recognized."

Gunn is optimistic such a possibility is not a far-fetched. The positive response Kamiseta clothes received during Magic, the biggest retailing show held recently in Las Vegas (the DTI and the GTEB had chosen Kamiseta and a handful of other Filipino brands to participate in the show) all the more convinced Gunn of Kamiseta’s global appeal.

Poised more and more on the brink of expanding outside Philippine shores – and with the lovely Natalie Portman to show off its clothes to the rest of the world – what’s to stop Kamiseta, which now has 31 stores nationwide, from shooting for the stars?