Bollywood’s celebrated fashion designer Manish Malhotra has got the beautiful Aishwarya Rai Bachchan to be his showstopper at the HDIL India Couture Week next month.

“Beautiful aishwarya is going to be the show stopper at my couture week show,” Manish wrote on his twitter page.

“Emerald is the main colour of my couture week collection,” he added.

Last week, he showcased his collection at the Lakme Fashion Week that had Bollywood actresses Priyanka Chopra, Preity Zinta, Rani Mukerji and Urmila Matondkar as his special guests.

Aishwarya Rai has somehow always dressed too old for her age. Even her attempts at trendy have failed miserably- jeans inside boots, mid- knee dresses, off- the- shoulder blouses. Cringe. Even her saris were too aunty for her age.

Aren’t we glad then that she is no more a red carpet embarrassment?

Bebo not only introduced size zero but also risque red carpet behaviour. Sporting, what looked like hickies on her back, getting beau Saif to tie up her back less blouse- along with some seriously fashionable clothes make her lead the red carpet race.

Rani Mukerji never got it right. A stylist’s nightmare, she mastered one hideous sari assault after another, also sticking mainly to blacks and reds. Trying to be sensual? We really can’t tell.

Amisha Patel till date does the in- between behenji and babe. That pout just looks bad.

What is that, you may ask? Those were the dark ages in B- town. Where Bipasha had an identity crisis for being too ‘ bold’ on screen so she came out in ‘ fusion’ wear and Manisha Koirala decided she was too pretty and innocent to be trendy.

Remember, they parted on a sour note after her hasty departure from his home production Chalte Chalte six years ago.

She had already canned a portion of the film when Salman Khan reportedly landed on the sets… and, well, the rest as they say is history.

Post that scene, Shahrukh khan let Ash off the hook and took Rani Mukerji as his leading lady.

And, since then, many big banners including Yashraj and Dharma failed to reunite the pair that created such magic in Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Devdas.

Subsequently, though the Bollywood Badshah wasn’t invited to the Ash-Abhishek wedding, King Khan and wife Gauri posed with

Tthe Bachchans for the shutterbugs at the Drona premiere last year. And more recently, at Karan Johar’s birthday party on May 25, the two couples — SRK and Gauri, Ash and Abhi — spent quality time together.

In the light of this thawing of relations, comes the news of cinematographer-director Rajiv Menon (whose Kandukonden Kandukonden in Tamil had Tabu and Ash) reuniting the Shahrukh-Ash jodi. Menon is said to have flown to London to narrate a dramatic script (with Ash in mind) to Shahrukh, which the actor liked.

At this point of his career, Shahrukh is looking to do films that explore his dramatic intensity as in Devdas.  He has no problems working with Ash and she with him. At Karan’s birthday, the Bachchans and Khans got along famously. Rajiv Menon’s film is being seen as a natural progression towards mending the bridges between two of the most powerful families of Bollywood.

Sources say that Ash may star opposite SRK in sci-fi flick Ra 1, SRK’s home production or it could be a new film altogether. In Ra 1, SRK plays father to a teenage son and Ash could easily play a hot mamma. SRK and Ash had no qualms about working together until Salman Khan threw a fit on the sets of Chalte Chalte which resulted in Ash’s ouster from the film. The role then went to Rani Mukerji.

This created a rift between SRK and Ash and SRK and Salman. The latter made up a few years later at Farah’s sangeet ceremony to fight again at Katrina’s birthday bash last year. SRK and Ash made up at Karan Johar’s birthday bash earlier this year.

Gentlemanly SRK apologized to her for having wronged her. He also buried the hatchet with the Bachchans when he attended the Drona premiere last year. Thus the seven year cold war between the two superstars has come to an end and it is only a matter of a year or two before they sparkle on the silver screen again.

Aishwarya Rai Bachchan might be all of 35 and is losing out on endorsement deals and positions to the likes of Kareena Kapoor and plastic actress gone lucky, Katrina Kaif, but she still is going strong in more ways that one.

Not just Ash, her contemporaries like Sushmita Sen, Rani Mukerji, Preity Zinta and Kajol too have been replaced by the likes of Kat, Bebo, Deepika Padukone, even Sonam Kapoor and Genelia D’Souza.

But Ash is doing better than her contemporaries.She may not be the face of Coca-Cola and Nakshatra diamond jewellery in India, but she still has successful and long-standing international endorsements.

She has completed nearly a decade of endorsing Swiss luxury watch brand Longines, international soap Lux and is the brand ambassador of global haircare brand L’Oreal since 2003. And unlike Shilpa Shetty and Preity Zinta who have moved.

On to businesses like IPL with rich boyfriends, Ash still has some good movies like Maniratnam’s ‘Raavan’, Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s next with Hrithik Roshan, Vipul Shah’s ‘Action Replay’ with Akshay Kumar and a movie with Excel entertainment, probably one with Rajiv Menon as well. Hollywood top star Will Smith is still willing to work with her. That very well makes clear the fact that the dame is here to stay put in the glitzy world of showbiz for a few more years. The Kats, Bebos and Dipsys of the world be damned.

Aishwarya Rai Bachchan might be all of 35 and is losing out on endorsement deals and positions to the likes of Kareena Kapoor and plastic actress gone lucky, Katrina Kaif, but she still is going strong in more ways that one.

Not just Ash, her contemporaries like Sushmita Sen, Rani Mukerji, Preity Zinta and Kajol too have been replaced by the likes of Kat, Bebo, Deepika Padukone, even Sonam Kapoor and Genelia D’Souza.

But Ash is doing better than her contemporaries. She may not be the face of Coca-Cola and Nakshatra diamond jewellery in India, but she still has successful and long-standing international endorsements.

She has completed nearly a decade of endorsing Swiss luxury watch brand Longines, international soap Lux and is the brand ambassador of global haircare brand L’Oreal since 2003. And unlike Shilpa Shetty and Preity Zinta who have moved on to businesses like IPL with rich boyfriends.

Ash still has some good movies like Maniratnam’s “Raavan’, Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s next with Hrithik Roshan, Vipul Shah’s “Action Replay’ with Akshay Kumar and a movie with Excel entertainment, probably one with Rajiv Menon as well. Hollywood top star Will Smith is still willing to work with her. That very well makes clear the fact that the dame is here to stay put in the glitzy world of showbiz for a few more years.