"Some of my friends have called it the treasure hunt," says Gauri Khan, gingerly manoeuvring around coffee tables and chairs piled with bric-a-brac in her new South Mumbai concept store, The Design Cell.
"I`ve been planning this [store] for a while," says the star wife, who has long professed a passion for interior design. But she acquired the place only in November last year, and took less than three months to fill the whole space with handpicked decor pieces from across the world.
Though curated by her, the eclectic selection -- flooring from Symphony International, pieces from Elegant Marbles and Anemos, accessories and rugs by AMPM Designs, one-offs from Paris and New York -- doesn`t only echo her individual taste in furnishing.
"It`s not my home that I`m catering to," she explains. "Because you are catering to the people who are walking into the store, and everyone likes different things, you have to have everything, you can`t have [only] what is your taste."
Statement fireplace: "The wall section is an onyx piece from Elegant Marbles. It looks just like feathers," Khan says. "I put it here just to show that this can be used as art also. It can be seen like a painting, not just as a piece of marble or onyx."
Bringing the outside in: "It`s an indoor-outdoor concept," she explains. She took doors, windows and balconies, and how they would appear from the outside, and replicated them on the interior walls of the store.
Street inspiration: "This is a box that I was inspired by when walking on New York`s streets," she says. A room -- complete with a love seat, desk, chair and lights -- has been set within the hollow wooden framework of a box.
"It`s not to sell," she adds. "It`s a concept in the store. The settings can be changed to suit the client. Or you can actually turn this around and show it off like a display window."
Ethnic quirk: "This is by a person from Jodhpur, so it`s very Indian and rustic, yet funky. I found him because we were doing a hotel in Goa, for which we`d gone to him. He`s an exporter who ships to the United States."
BDST: 1525 HRS, MAR-29, 2014
