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Happ-Ines

By on February 28, 2009

Having just returned to Tokyo from her recent family vacation on Boracay Island in the Philippines, Inés Ligron is back in action – full throttle. Around her meetings are taking place, interviews are being conducted and photos are being snapped while phones ring and computer screens flicker in the background. She sits casually, speaking with us from her office located on the 5th floor of a non-desrcript building along chic and trendy Omotesando Dori, on top of the Oriental Bazaar, while unsuspecting passers-by meander down the fashionable, tree-lined street below. 

For Ligron, 46, it’s really just another day as the National Director of Japan’s Miss Universe Organization, a position she’s held since 1998, and an operation co-owned by both New York real estate mogul Donald Trump and NBC Universal Inc. 

Since coming on board at the request of ‘the Donald’, Ligron has, along with her team, produced three top 5 finishes in the Miss Universe pageant within a span of four years, beginning with Miyako Miyazaki finishing 5th in 2003, Kurara Chibana finishing 1st Runner-Up in 2006, and most recently, with Riyo Mori winning Miss Universe 2007!

Not bad for an expat who admits that pageantry never really interested her!

But it’s also another day for her as mom to her sons Ben Phillipe, 25, Noa Bleu, 8, and Luca Kei, 7, as a wife to her loving husband Ken, not to mention as a friend to all the other people she cares about. 

This is just who she is – a power-working, sociable, confident woman with an instinctive talent for both fashion and style. And this is the way it’s always been, for as long as she can remember.

“My parents always joked that I was born wearing high heels… because I always loved fashion, and did everything 10 years earlier than anyone else,” she reveals. 

And while she tried attending fashion college, she hated it because it bored her. “I am creative, with huge attention-deficit disorder…  my body was at school but my mind was in Hollywood-land!” she declares. But her drive and determination was evident at an even much earlier age.

“When I was 10, I started to clean dishes, serve clients, clean the floor and the toilets. I would do anything to get money because I hated my mom’s (fashion) taste and this way I could buy myself clothes that I liked. I even bought my first motorcycle at 15… working crazy hours during my summer holidays while my friends were playing on the beach!” she recalls, pausing, then continuing…

“And ten days after my third son was born, I was organizing a 11,000- person gala in Tokyo,” she admits, suprisingly even to herself. 

Suffice it to say that Ligron is not one for standing still, at least not for too long. At 18 she was married for the first time, at 21 she had her first child, and then started her own highly successful beauty center and spa, which she then sold 6 years later for a healthy profit. 

In 1995, she became the Asia/Pacific Director of IMG Models in Hong Kong, introducing to Asia such world-famous supermodels as Tyra Banks, Milla Jovovich, Stephanie Seymour, Caroline Murphy, Liv Tyler and Angela Lindevall.

Then her name came up in a conversation with Donald Trump, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Now, 11 years after first arriving in Japan, she admits that things have slowed down, but only just a bit. 

She is still first to arrive at the office everyday at 8:30, after doing her own hair and make-up because no one does it quite the way she likes it. And while she does sometimes leave early to spend more time with her family, either roller-blading, playing in the park, reading, watching the Discovery Channel, listening to music, taking photos, kissing, racing cars or riding a Harley, she also has no qualms about pulling all-nighters to get her job done. She eats well, her favorite food being unagi, avocado and spinach, and she exercises, either at home or at the Ritz Carlton gym, where she likes bumping into the odd celebs. 

So what’s her secret? How does she keep it all together?

Balance, love and some really good help.

“My family is my treasure. I have three beautiful sons… who are so well behaved and such loving boys because of Até Juliet (our nanny) & Até Remy (our tutor), the two stars at home teaching our kids these values while I work,” Ligron confides. She also extolls the virtues of her loving husband, who “… writes me love messages on the mirror in our bathroom everyday and treats me like a princess. I know that he loves me crazily and it makes me love him even more. Every day we cherish being partners in life and we love the concept of being together forever,” she beams.

And beams she does, confiding that now more than ever she is genuinely content.

“There is nothing else I would like in my life now. I feel I have everything!”

And how can you feel the same as Inés Ligron, no matter who you are and what you do,  especially if you are a Japanese woman? Simple really…

“Be proud to be a woman and send that message to the people around you. Think big for your life. Be confident about who you are. Love and respect yourself always.”

Fantabulous advice from someone living it, no?!

 

About Stephen Lebovits