NBA hopeful Kobe Bryant, pop star Brandy put cameras in overdrive at Lower Merion prom | From the archives

This story originally appeared in the Inquirer on May 26, 1996.

You call this a normal date?

Well, you do if you’re Brandy - teen queen, sitcom star, singing sensation, one of People magazine’s 50 most beautiful people, and date of soon-to-be NBA player Kobe Bryant. Normal’s a little bit different for you.

For one, you get to go to the prom of a high school you’ve never clapped eyes on, with a fella you’ve only just met, on a coast where you don’t live, in a city you hardly know.

And you show up more than two hours after the event starts. And, instead of just your parents and some Polaroids, you get gawked at by crews from local newspapers, TV shows, the tabloids, and People magazine.

And instead of just bringing a purse and some clothes for the beach the next day, you arrive with a publicist, a phalanx of bodyguards, a fashion coordinator, a makeup artist, a hairstylist and — oh, yeah — your mom.

"I’m sad,'' murmured Sonja Norwood, wistfully watching her 17-year-old daughter, willow slim and looking all grown up in champagne Moschino, flawless maquillage and shoulder-skimming braids, ascend the marble stairway to the second-floor ballroom of the Bellevue, where the Lower Merion Township High School prom was in full bass-thumping bloom last night.

Brandy held Kobe’s arm (he looking debonair in a tuxedo and banded-collar shirt, no tie).

She looked radiant.

Her mother looked miserable.

“I want to go up. I want to see,” she said, clutching the publicist’s shoulder.

She walked upstairs and arrived back in the lobby a few minutes later satisfied with the security, if not with Brandy 's reception.

“Everybody’s asking her for autographs, asking her for pictures,” she said. “It’s like she’s working.”

Here’s what you would have learned had you been at the Bellevue waiting for Brandy , who met Bryant at a recent Nike All-Star basketball game in Philadelphia: The waif look is still upon us.

Girls wore long, shapeless slips of silk in beige, black and white, with chunky heels. Guys wore tuxes - some with sneakers.

The de rigeur accessory was a sunburn, or a tan, for both sexes, a bouquet of roses for the ladies, a walking stick for the more stylish of the men.

That and a healthy disdain for the media.

“Look at all these [jerks] waiting for Kobe,” sneered one young miss in a floor-length red dress as she swept up the stairs.

Cynicism is alive and well among the aforementioned jerks, who felt that the event had a lot less to do with romance than with product placement and two fledgling stars looking for face time.

The Kobe and Brandy show was supposed to get under way at 8:30 but didn’t start until an hour and a half later. At that point, members of the press were split between those who said the couple wouldn’t show and those who insisted that the pair would boost their respective careers with an arrival timed to the 11 o’clock news.

And parents are still parents, no matter which soon-to-be star their child goes to high school with. Annette Somershein, who was hiding behind cars waiting for her daughter Heather to arrive in a horse-drawn carriage, said her daughter was thrilled with the attention.

“It just adds to the fun of the night,'' Somershein said. She added one thing: ”All she wants the world to know is that she’s going to be an artist someday. And she’ll be famous, too."

And where to next for the glamor pair? They were headed for Atlantic City early this morning. And then Brandy’s flying home to California.