(Thumbs up)FILIPINO talents continue to make hay abroad.

One of them is Joker Arroyo, gold medalist in the equestrian competition of the 23rd Southeast Asian Games.

The 20-year-old daughter and namesake of Sen. Joker Arroyo will lead the equestrian team in the prestigious all-Ivy League Equestrian Championships. She?s leading the pack from Yale to compete with those of Harvard, Penn, Princeton, Columbia, Brown, Dartmouth and Cornell.

Yale will host the championship on April 11 at the Volo farm in Westford, Massachusetts, according to Sen. Arroyo, who broke the news to the Inquirer.

The show promises to be hugely successful, with provisional entries in excess of 200 riders from the different schools.

The tentative roster that Yale expects to field for the team event includes Arroyo in Open Fences and her classmates and friends Jeannie Nevin in Open Flat, Esther Zuckermann in Intermediate Fences and Flat, Monique Wolfe in Novice Fences and Flat, Nicole Wolfe in Walk-Trot-Canter, and Kathleen Borschow in Walk-Trot.

This lineup has met success on other occasions, and the team looks forward to continuing its excellent run.

The accomplishment of hosting the all-Ivy League Championships will be a sweet end to Arroyo?s term as team officer. She?s passing on the responsibilities to younger students at the end of the year, and will focus on her senior year.

Sen. Arroyo flew to the US to watch his daughter perform.

Europe hearts Michelle?and her fashion sense

(Thumbs up)IN A WORLD transfixed on the sartorial choices of US First Lady Michelle Obama, does anyone remember what transpired in the G20 summit and the Nato meeting in the previous week?

But ask what Ms Obama wore to her first meeting with the British monarch?and the resulting faux pas?and chances are you?re likelier to get a definitive answer (it was an Isabel Toledo-Jason Wu-Azzedine Alaia combo, where on Earth were you?).

The moment the Obamas arrived in England, she in a yellow Jason Wu dress, black Michael Kors coat and an Alaia studded belt, there has been no letup in the media scrutiny.

She was photographed the next day with the wife of the British PM in a J. Crew cardigan that reportedly sold out in the US within hours. Her individuality shone as she stood next to the wives of other heads of states in an asymmetric Junya Watanabe cardigan.

Perhaps most anticipated, however, was Obama?s meeting with French First Lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy?dubbed by media as a fashion face-off. Bruni-Sarkozy is a former supermodel and singer.

But it wasn?t to be a showdown. Bruni-Sarkozy, 41, who has shown a more refined than trendy look since she married the French president, turned out in head-to-toe Dior, her gray coat with a soft bow at the neck mirroring that of Obama?s black-and-fuchsia floral Thakoon ensemble. Underneath, Bruni-Sarkozy wore a matching gray dress, Obama a reverse-print fuchsia dress. The former has taken to wearing flats (again, Dior) so as not to tower over her husband. Obama herself was in kitten-heeled Jimmy Choos.

At the dinner in Baden-Baden, Germany, that evening, the women both wore black, Obama in an Azzedine Alaia.

Notably loyal to young, unknown American designers, Obama incorporated pieces from European designers in her wardrobe for this trip.

Now the question in the minds of top American designers, however, is: When will they hear from the First Lady?

Non-models rule

(Thumbs up)TALK about celebrating diversity?in shapes, colors and sizes.

Dolce & Gabbana?s print campaign for its Cruise 2009 collection began attracting attention when it first came out in the glossies late last year. Shot by Steven Meisel, it stars Claudia Schiffer and a circus cast of vari-shaped and colored models in the background.

On the supermodel?s left are brunette Siamese twins, and a silver-haired elderly-looking woman in a metallic gold swimsuit reclining on a beach chair, her left hand intertwined with a much younger-looking beefcake. Behind Schiffer, atop a table, is a skinny woman in a two-piece bikini with bleached hair (think Donatella Versace). Her skin is so deeply tanned that her age is indeterminable from the photo.

There?s a half-naked elderly man, also reclined on a chair, in all his saggy, wrinkled glory. A plump woman in bright crimson swimsuit sits just behind him. Then there?s a mishmash of regular, non-supermodel types scattered around?just like the rest of us.

The spy

(Thumbs down)IN ONE of the most publicized legal battles for inheritance among one of the wealthiest clans in the country, what some people are asking is: Who is? there couldn?t be a better word? the double agent? Which family member is feeding info from one camp to another? A spy in high society?s rarefied air.

Actually, a James Bond plot is less complicated than this running saga.

Socialite does a Boyet Fajardo

(Thumbs down)THIS socialite tried to pull a?pardon the pun?Boyet Fajardo one recent evening when, at a popular Makati bar, she screamed at a group of young men who wanted to use the restroom.

?Why are you here? Don?t you know who I am?? she berated them, according to one of the men.

They could have easily shot back, ?Don?t you know what you are??

She was in the men?s room.