Maven of Good Spirits

15 Wednesday Apr 2015

Posted by sitanshi talati-parikh in Interviews (All), Interviews: Business, Publication: Verve Magazine

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Aishwarya Nair, luxurybrands, The Leela Group, The Rose Code, Verve Magazine

Published Verve Magazine April 2015
Photograph by Ryan Martis

“It is life in a bottle and that to me is magic.”

The third-generation hotelier with The Leela Group, Aishwarya Nair is the head of corporate food and wine merchandising, responsible for drafting the master wine list for all the units in the chain of hotels. When you factor in variables including location, climate, cuisine and clientele, it becomes quite a task. A vino culture educator and writer, she pushes the envelope for the food and wine experience and knowledge in India. The only woman in India to have been felicitated with an honorary diploma by the region of Champagne, Comite Interprofessionel du Vin de Champagne, Aishwarya has received the ‘Businesswoman of the year 2014’ title from the Indian Leadership Conclave and has also published a coffee-table cookbook, The Fine Art of Food, with her sister, Amruda and photographer, Rohit Chawla.

“The subject itself keeps me going: there is always something new to learn. Every vintage has a different personality, which is the beauty of the wine world!” With a culinary degree to back her up — she obtained an Associate’s and Bachelor’s Degree in hotel and restaurant management at the Culinary Institute of America — Aishwarya ends up delving into the creative aspects of food as well. On a regular workday, her key functions involve product development, menu engineering, research about wine and food, creating menus and reworking existing lists based on her basic algorithm. “I looked at myself as competition and that enabled me to work creatively and build something sustainable in terms of branding for the Leela hotels’ repertoire in wine or my own artisanal brand AMAI.” After the success of her luxury pastry brand, Dolce, she went on to create AMAI influenced by the principles of Japanese macrobiotics. It is artisanal — all crafted by hand — using no refined flour, dairy or eggs. “It is what I predict will be the future for India – the idea of conscious eating.”

She’s fond of electronic music, world cuisine, all things retro, and foreign or classic films. “Eclectic, minimal, edgy yet sophisticated” is her style quotient, while dressing up for an occasion means “coordinating the design of your outfit to match (or mismatch) your accessories, make-up and hair, immaculately.” She believes her curiosity for all things and openness to new experiences is a personality trait that serves her well.

Thirty-year-old Aishwarya Nair, who would like to reach a point where her wants are lesser than her needs, sees herself investing creative resources in a fashion-related business, and cherishes her grandfather’s crocodile leather black suspenders, which he once let her borrow.

She remains inspired by “design, travel, Wes Anderson, powerful women, astrology and metaphysics,” and believes that success is all about being a pioneer in her field. “I would like to live a life where every whim is achievable, by my own right, independently.”

Like Second Skin

23 Wednesday Apr 2014

Posted by sitanshi talati-parikh in Fashion & Style, Publication: Verve Magazine

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Bespoke, Fashion, luxurybrands, Shivan & Narresh, Swimwear, Verve Magazine

Published: Vervemagazine.in April 2014

How do you go about getting a swimsuit customised to your tastes and body type? Shivan & Narresh are first designer brand to do so. Find out how…

The dapper designer duo is “selling confidence, not fancy bathing suits”. Shivan liked illustrating women in skimpy clothes, Narresh liked to paint with bold colours. Together they became the popular, and India’s first and only designer swimwear brand Shivan & Narresh. “Modest with cut and bold with a sense of colour” is their brand philosophy and they like to believe that it reflects the country’s cultural roots. Indian women are not built like European women, so it’s understood that they need a swimwear line that is made for their body type.

WHY
1. Based on the Indian consumer’s psychology, customisation has been key from the onset of Shivan & Narresh’s designs. They believe that in India, the consumers are spoilt for choice and there is a strong expectation to be able to custom-create something.

2. While in the West, women are forgiving of their bodies, in India women have for years hidden their bodies behind layers of clothing and with just a single layer, women begin to feel naked. There is a great deal of self-confidence involved in including a bathing suit in an Indian woman’s wardrobe.

3. You wear a bathing suit for yourself, not your friends – if you don’t love how you look in the mirror, you won’t buy it. So customisation has to be a part of their business plan to be sustainable.

4. Customisation within the ready-to-wear category gives risk-averse customers a chance to graduate into more evolved buyers, giving them the comfort zone to mature.

HOW

1. Ready-to-wear with micro-customisation via either colour or style.
Using a current available style as the base, you can add things like more coverage in the back, make the neck deeper, add straps, pads and underwires within the same style. Colour blocking, a trademark of the brand’s designs helps shift focus areas of the body away from weaker areas. Colour creates a mirage, and diagonal lines help the torso look slender.
It can be done online on www.shivanandnarresh.com or at a local store retailing their brand or at a pop-up in your city. (See upcoming city schedules below.)
There is a 20% customisation fee.

2. Their Handcraft service.
This is a one-of-a-kind piece, which will be only for you. You take an appointment with either designer (both may also be present) where they will take your measurements. A body suit (like a cat suit) will be made as per your measurements. You wear that and either designer sketches on the body suit in front of the mirror. You can guide them about what kind of a piece you would like and how this should be done. Then you sit with colour swatches and different quality of fabrics. You can choose from thin fabrics, experiencing something as light as second skin. Later the designers split open the bodysuit on the lines drawn, in mosaic puzzle pieces, using these pieces to make the pattern which comes back together like a glove. It becomes a perfect fit. Essentially in this case, everything is possible – it’s the purest form of body art. They say that they are the only swimwear brand in the world that practices this.
The process takes 4-6 weeks and involves 2-3 personalisation sittings.
It costs minimum 10 times the cost of a regular bathing suit.

WHERE
Each region has a different demand and all metros have customised swimsuits workshops. This also gives the designers insights into what works for different cities. For instance, in Bombay, where the emphasis is on healthier living, trikinis (one-piece with cutouts) and baring skin in the front are acceptable. In Delhi, where the purchases are lifestyle centric, they are experimental about the backs but not the fronts. Tier 2 cities, where there is great fashion hunger, are very experimental and accept the skimpiest of pieces.

Tentative pop-up schedule:
04 April: Bangalore
11th April: New Delhi
15th April: Chennai
18th April: Ahmedabad & Honeymoon Service at TAJ New Delhi
23rd-24th April: Mumbai
28th-29th April: Hyderabad
12th May: Surat
19th May: Mumbai

THE EXPERIENCE
“I’ve actually had a couple of pieces designed by the duo. Bespoke products to me signify true luxury. Swimwear is one of those items of clothing where the fit and cut can make a world of a difference. The bespoke experience was addictive as I was advised on how to make my shoulders stand out, legs look longer and which colour combinations would work best on my skin. The other nice part is being able to make a couple of pieces that can be mixed, matched and layered to make different outfits for different occasions which comes in handy for a destination wedding or beach getaway. I’ve been utterly spoilt and can’t imagine having to buy swimwear off the rack!” – Amruda Nair, The Leela Hotels

A Bag For All Times

26 Wednesday Aug 2009

Posted by sitanshi talati-parikh in Interviews (All), Interviews: Lifestyle, Publication: Verve Magazine

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Designers, Fashion, India, Interview, Lifestyle, luxurybrands, Style, vervemagazine

Published: Verve Magazine, Features, August 2009

A designer bag is your chance to stalk up the social ladder. Sitanshi Talati-Parikh chats with brand consultant-turned-writer Radha Chadha about the cult of luxury

It isn’t easy to talk about luxury without moralising, particularly when you see girls ready to clobber each other with their Manolos to get their hands on 16 bags at 50 per cent off at the Gucci sale. I began wondering about the craze for luxury brands. Ironically, the answer arrived in the form of Radha Chadha and Paul Husband’s book The Cult of the Luxury Brand: Inside Asia’s love affair with luxury. Excerpts from an interview with Radha Chadha:

How did the love affair begin?
I went to Hong Kong in 1997, well before luxury brands had set up shop in India, not knowing much about them. I was fresh off the plane from India and couldn’t understand how my secretary could afford a Louis Vuitton bag! Working in an advertising agency, I invariably ended up dealing with luxury brand projects, and over a point of time I simply fell in love!

You talk about the ‘democratisation of luxury’ – isn’t that an oxymoron?
Yes it is! Most people associate the word ‘luxury’ with ‘exclusive’. The way luxury brands are marketed today, there is nothing exclusive about it. Take Japan – 94 per cent of women in their 20s have a Louis Vuitton piece. There is nothing exclusive about it in that society. When the access to luxury is there for whoever can bite into it (and luxury also becomes bite-sized), then there is democratisation of luxury.

Where is India going with luxury brands?
India has a lot of luxury, but we do not have too many global luxury brands. We have tons of potential luxury brands waiting to happen. Brands exist more in the head and heart – its all about how you present it to the world. India has yet to do that. Also, in India it is only the top end of the market that is shopping. As the Indian economy grows, the use of these products will also spread, as it has in every country.

Sex and the City, the movie, introduces the concept of renting a bag….
It’s true! What is also common is buying a bag and selling it at the same store. When the desire becomes greater than the pocket – that’s when this happens.

So, the bag is the new solitaire?
The solitaire says ‘I have got money baby’, but a luxury brand says ‘I’ve got money and a certain taste’ – it has a certain ability to express personality.

Why do people buy luxury brands?
Many people buy luxury brands for the sheer pleasure, for the quality…but in Asia I have found that people buy to prove their status in society. Almost all of Asia was poor at one point of time and had ways of marking status. Luxury brands have been around for ages, but the way they were marketed was very different. With the recognition that accompanies the right branding, luxury brands become status markers.

How did the book happen?
I have this burning desire to write. I study people, and luxury brands seemed like an interesting lens with which to study countries. It is such a rich subject – you can understand so much about human beings and behaviour and a country by the kind of things people over there do and what drives them.

Does art fall into the concept of luxury?
I have defined luxury brands arbitrarily in the book to limit the scope, as stuff on the body. So many other things like cars, condominiums, private planes, yachts and even art can fall into it. A lot of these artists are like brands (try telling them that, they will be offended!) but MF Husain is also a brand!

the convenience of love or love in a LV bag

21 Sunday Jun 2009

Posted by sitanshi talati-parikh in Musings

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luxurybrands, romance, Thoughts

if you really think about it, love marriages can be as much of a compromise as an arranged marriage. if you marry for love, then, unless you are really lucky, everything else is a compromise.

if you marry for material satisfaction, then unless you are very lucky, love is a compromise.

the bottom line, life is a compromise. the only difference being, you choose your compromises.

in fact, life has come a full cycle. If you go back in time you would realise that marriages were arranged – for the best possible choice, with often no choice in the matter. Soon after, the next generation adopted the concept of love marriages – where love mattered more than the options it came with (or at least we hope so, it is indeed massive generalisation). And now, we see an era of mad love taking place in the younglings (a mere few years younger than us): they are experiencing true love in the louis vuitton.

marriage is now once again a convenience – it is an arrangement of convenient love that comes in the shape, size and price of a (or many a) designer handbag. the mantra: “he does love me so, he always buys me the best!” if we need a brand to define who we are, then we do indeed suffer from distastrously low self-esteem.

Who we are is and shall not be determined by who or what we wear, carry or hang out with – it should be something that emanates from us – a greater sense of being, a whole person. if you were to be remembered, how do you think people would describe you? With or without your handbag?

the highs of the lows

01 Monday Jun 2009

Posted by sitanshi talati-parikh in Musings

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Art, luxurybrands, Stock Market, Thoughts

The stock market, the art market, the luxury goods market – all have been hit. I read a good article by Ben Lewis in The Times (UK) which thoroughly summarizes exactly what has been going on. Quoted from his article: “The prices were so high that they obliterated the meanings of the works, reducing them to symbols of excess and obscenity. I suspected that these prices were a sign that something was going dangerously wrong in the world economy and the human imagination.”

And this reflects across all the recessionary markets which faced inflated prices. At the end of the day, the behaviour of buyers is highly idiotic – they buy at a premium and sell to stay afloat at a low market. That is also what my father-in-law talks about, especially in his recent book that highlights the irrational behaviour of the buyers in the stock market.

It is not very different with art or luxury goods – it is also a severe case of herd mentality, when people buy because everyone else is buying, to make that quick buck bec they believe they will be left out, bec they are afraid of looking ‘uncool’ or ‘stupid’, or bec they just have a lot of money lying around. The worst is when people borrow to buy into goods at inflated prices, planning to cash in and make the big moolah. These people tend to slink away in misery when the markets are low, waiting for the markets to do well again, before investing! It makes no sense. The smart investor would buy when no one is buying and when the deals are available, right?

The other deal with inflated prices is that those aiming for statements of wealth are willing to part with more money, simply to appear ‘cooler’ – to have been able to afford a painting at an over-inflated price – a price that may never come around again until the next sucker turns up. These are people who are bound to be let down. This ability or willingness to part with a premium for something that may never be worth that much, denotes serious irrationality; and is one of the reasons that markets spiral out of control.

The question remains – how far is one willing to go to make that statement of wealth? to show that you have ‘arrived’ – how low are you willing to go, and how high a price are you willing to pay?