The ANA Fashion Extravaganza 2008 gracefully stole the sighs of more than 800 audience members on July 5, 2008 in Marriott Hotel, Baltimore. With “A Week in a Nepali’s Life” as the theme, the show adventurously blended fashion and emotion. Five sequences displaying five emotions - “love,” “work,” “tension,” “joy,” and “culture” - and accordingly five wears - dressy, formal, informal, glamorous and cultural – kept the eyes of the audience riveted onto the stage. The models were role-casted to exude these five emotions, while bedazzling the audience with their catwalks and stunning looks. The show was about how the Nepali youth live their lives in the North Americas, how they sail through their emotions throughout a week, and how they dress to match their moods and modalities. A posh parade of Nepalipan!

Pukar Malla and Pooja Sharma, both from California, co-organized the Fashion Extravaganza at ANA convention, while Simon Dhungana chaired the convention. A panel of five online judges, Malvika Subba, Dipankar/Abhinav Kasaju, Anup Prakash, Namrata Shrestha and Aashik Ranpal, had the challenging task of picking the Top 6 Male and Top 6 Female models of 2008 from a pool of stellar applicants prior to the show. The Model Hunt Winners were Prashant Rajbhandari, Anup Pandey, Nishan Basnet, Sagar Onta, Sushan Manandhar and Jimmy Lamsal in the male category and Raksha Sharma, Bimina Ranjit, Sabina Malla, Smriti Basnyat, Raksha Sharma and Medhawi Giri in the female category.

These Model Hunt winners from different states of the US came to ANA to sport their talents. The onsite judges were Karishma Manandhar, Deepesh Kishore Bhattarai and Sharmila Upreti. Prashant Rajbhandari from Virginia and Bimina Ranjit from Dallas were conferred the treasured titles of Mr. and Ms. Vogue ANA 2008. Anup Pandey from New York and Smriti Basnyat from Dallas captured the hearts as they became Mr. and Ms. Taswir-priya ANA 2008. Sushan Manandhar and Medhawi Giri drew unending smiles from the audience as they celebrated their Mr. and Ms. Muskaan ANA 2008 titles. Prashant Rajbhandari gathered more cheer as he secured the ANA Saathi 2008 title.

Not just did the show bring a refreshing change to ANA but also drew many youth to one creative platform. Such events have tremendous values just like the organizer Pukar Malla’s conclusive note at the show - “If today, the Nepali youth have come together to this entertaining fashion event, together, tomorrow we can put our minds and energy towards education for Nepal or other progressive platforms; together, we can create vibrant Nepali communities around the globe.”