The Voice of Fashion
In an era when most celebrity love stories burn out under their own hashtags, Priyanka Chopra Jonas and Nick Jonas manage to stay whole. Their union is a multimedia franchise of love, parenting, luxury, and cross-cultural fluency.
Few days back, from an airport somewhere between Los Angeles and New York, Priyanka Chopra Jonas was reporting live on Instagram. Nick Jonas tied Priyanka’s hair into a neat bun while they watched baseball and he admitted he was multi-tasking. It’s a small act, almost domestic—yet filmed, shared, and adored by millions. It is real enough to like, polished enough to sell and if you dissect the comments, their fans and friends love them as a couple.
That same evening, the two were seen hugging and welcoming guests at Priyanka’s manager Anjula Acharia’s ‘All That Glitters’ Diwali bash in New York, a melting pot for the South Asian diaspora. Both wore “Indian origin” couture. Their cues and hair styles, the jazz and vibe was picked up by everyone, from fashion blogs to the New York Times Style handle.
That was only two days after Priyanka posted her delight on Instagram, telling their little girl Malti Marie in the caption, that “Daddy is back” on Karva Chauth. She added that Nick returns home every year to spend the fasting festival with her and that her mum and mum-in-law indulge her in their own ways as fond Indian families do. The dupatta that covered her head was a bridal, Karva Chauth red. These are usually filmi details. But they pop up here and we like them.
One more rewind (phew, the Jonases are a whirlwind on steroids) and Priyanka was in India, posing for the feisty paps of Mumbai, dressed to kill as she mostly is, addressing the media at Bvlgari’s Serpenti Infinito exhibition at NMACC. She is the face of Bvlgari and this is the year of the snake.
The Rise of the Jonas Coupledom
The year is also of the rise and rise of the Jonas coupledom. A global story of cultural realisation, where franchises, celebrities, designers, and brands all chase the same elusive formula: the balance between oomph and love, between domesticity and desire, between private tenderness and public display.
Few couples perform togetherness quite like Priyanka and Nick. Every kiss, every Karva Chauth, every matching holiday outfit, every time their toddler daughter giggles or lifts a mic to join daddy Nick, is another episode in a perfectly serialised romance that spans continents and contracts.
It is worthy of admiration at a time when most celebrity love stories burn out under the weight of their own hashtags.
Love as Labour
Maintaining a transcontinental and transcultural marriage is not easy. And then to build a narrative of how and why it works: the logistics, the crew, the aesthetic management, what they mean to brands, organisations and groups who have signed them on, can make it laborious. “Celebrity practice involves an ongoing maintenance of a fan base, performed intimacy, authenticity and access, and construction of a consumable persona,” wrote Alice E. Marwick and Danah Boyd, in To See and Be Seen. While the Jonases would get a tick on all counts, their authenticity radar is easy and thus infectious. It is the single most sought after ingredient in the age of living through the gaze of the camera. Performing authenticity without having it would make it labour. They don’t seem to be labouring. That’s why you are reading this article.
Even though their individual careers, one as an actor and a spokesperson for several socio-cultural causes, the other a singer and Grammy-nominated musician, must have individual demands on their skills, craft and time, it is the Business of the Couple that scales their story. In terms of brands, Bvlgari, Perfect Moment (partnered as investors in the luxury activewear brand), Nick’s Fossil and Dexcom Warrior associations, Anomaly Haircare, the brand Priyanka invests in also positions the couple as a scalable micro-economy.
Since their marriage symbolically, and in real life, stands for a cross-cultural partnership, the business and busyness they unlock together moves like the hands of a clock across continents—dazzling appearances at the Met Gala in Valentino and Ralph Lauren; Manish Malhotra and Amit Aggarwal couture from India, Rahul Mishra sherwanis and saris for floral weddings; Sabyasachi Mukherjee jewels, Priyanka’s film production company back home in India, her work with UNICEF as the Global Goodwill Ambassador, Nick’s philanthropic commitments.
And there is more. Bumble India as investor-partner-advisor, F&B collaborations, Nick’s health and lifestyle flywheel, which adds credibility — he fronted Dexcom’s Super Bowl ad launching G7, with medical tech and mass reach. To cap, the Jonas Brothers music tours keep the couple in the culture stream year-round. According to Pollstar, “The Tour” in 2023 and 2024, grossed $100 Million plus.
The Jonas-Chopra Franchise
The way it has shaped up, the Jonas-Chopra franchise markets global modernity to both America and India. It rewires not just stereotypes of East-West relationships, motherhood and masculinity, but blends social responsiveness as well as capitalism.
What captures me most as a cultural commentator, is that in the age of appearances, when fame is fragmented, the Jonas-Chopra brand is not one of rebellion. Where many celebrity couples post from birthdays and anniversaries and tell us they and their kids are alright, this one is continuously posting evidence of love and coordination. There is a fluency that one can pick up from. How not to do cringe is another valuable lesson.
Perhaps, one of the reasons the couple has emerged as a powerful content genre is because they reinforce each other’s myths instead of fragmenting them.
Tonight, as PeeCee, as she is often called by the Indian media, arrives to grace an AFEW event by designer Rahul Mishra and Blue Label in London, she might remind us of American cultural theorist Lauren Berlant’s words “Intimacy builds worlds, it is a world making experience”.
