India's top-50 beauties in Femina's 5-cover issue

NEW DELHI: There's nothing as beautiful as a confident woman. And Deepika Padukone - all of 21 and ready to make her movie debut - was the picture of poise and confidence as she walked into the Capital's Shangri La Hotel on Friday. All eyes were on the glam girl and ace director Karan Johar, as the good-looking duo unveiled Femina’s special issue on India’s 50 most beautiful women. Available in a set of five, the various covers feature Aishwarya Rai-Bachchan, Bipasha Basu, Preity Zinta, Priyanka Chopra and Deepika herself.

"Beauty is useless without personality, but please let's stop using the 'beauty with brains' cliche. If a woman in the glam business is beautiful, that’s quite enough. She's not meant to be a rocket scientist," said Karan, who had the crowd eating out of his hands when he took to the mike in his chat show host avatar.

Most comfortable in the director's seat, the dapper filmmaker directed photographers on the right angle to shoot from. Deepika came face-to-face with herself as she looked at one of the covers that had her own picture. Flashing her deadly dimples, she then handed over the magazine to Karan. "I think beauty is about being comfortable with who you are," said Deepika. Thrilled to be on one of the covers, she admitted the honour made her "feel beautiful".

For the first time it was the reader who chose India’s 50 most beautiful women through SMS, web and print poll conducted by Femina. The Femina team also sought views from photographers, fashion designers and opinion makers from a choice of 100 such women.

Commenting on the release of the special issue of Femina, Shashikala Venkatraman, COO Worldwide Media, said: "Femina is all about celebrating women and womanhood. Fashion may come and go but women are in style forever. This issue of Femina is to celebrate Indian beauty - as much as we have celebrated inner strength and beauty in the past, this issue is all about purely and unabashedly saluting beauty in its outer manifestation."

Among the attendees were Shahnaz Husain, Riddhima Kapoor and Bharat Sahni, Kalyani Chawla, Anupama Verma, Jattinn and Gunjan Kochhar, Ambika Pillai, Manav Gangwani, Rohit Gandhi and Rahul Khanna, Shibani Kashyap, Jas Arora and Boney, Ameeta Seth, Navin Ansal and Raseel Gujral.

Sourcre: timesofindia.indiatimes.com