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LIVING:
INTERIORS
A
FASHION fOR DESIGN
Urban
homes take on a new look as a boom in design and consumer demand sweeps
the country
By Namita
Bhandare
Photographs
by Bandeep Singh
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| Teatime
Tango: Bone china tea pot in a contemporary shape |
Look
around you. Take a good hard look. At your house, at your office, at the
places where you shop, where you eat out, where your children go to study.
Unless you're stuck in the Stone Age, chances are the explosion in product
design has caught on with you. From bathroom tiles to teaspoons, candlestands
to lamps, sandals to suitcases, Indian design seems to be waking up to
a global avatar. Need a light fitting? Your local store has everything
from modernist halogens in funky frosted-glass shades to copper holders
for the more ethnically inclined. There's faux silver and marble and wrought
iron. A lamp for every mood. Ditto for ceramics. Mediterranean colours,
deep yellows and blues and your morning cuppa will never look the same
again. As a trickle-down effect, Khurja potters now sell on street corners
cool new designs in cool new shapes, obvious rip-offs from more upmarket
stores but at a fraction of the price.
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| Innovation:
Industrial metal scrap went into the making of this clock |
"This
is the age of design. How a thing looks determines how well it will sell,"
says Darlie O. Koshy, executive director of the Ahmedabad-based National
Institute of Design (NID). "There's an explosion in design",
agrees interior designer Raseel Gujral Ansal. Clients, she adds, are willing
to pay for nice-looking homes. "There's a new breed of Indians who
have their own homes, are self-employed and have the ability to spend."
Thanks to
the media, customers now know what they want and the look they want to
create as their style statement-art deco, minimalist, funky. "From
being the stranglehold of architects and designers, the interiors industry
is now addressing itself directly to users," says Alpa Sheth, a structural
engineer based in Mumbai.
The consumer
is king as the boom in home products and accessories comes at a time when
bathrooms become "glamour rooms" and interior design magazines
sell more than Arundhati Roy and Vikram Seth combined. Trade shows and
mega exhibitions run to capacity crowds looking for the "latest"
designer trends. Indian consumers who've stuck solely with function for
decades are now saying: fine about the utility, but how does it look?
Changes
in lifestyle are also driving the design explosion. In many joint families,
for instance, it is not uncommon to come across TV sets in bedrooms, replacing
the single family TV in the living room. Computers and computer furniture
are taking the place of bookshelves in children's rooms. And as more and
more women work out of home, there is need for an office space in the
house. All of these mean new designs and new concepts in utilising space,
says Mumbai-based architect Pinkish Shah.
Corresponding
with this new trend, lifestyle or home stores have erupted all over the
country. Old favourites like Mumbai's Contemporary Arts and Crafts and
The Bombay Store have been joined by newer entrants like Tresorie and
A A Living. In Chennai, Kalpa Druma sells a variety of handicrafts, furniture,
interior textiles and fabrics, while Squisto Legno (literally, exquisite
wood) in Coimbatore sells locally made craft items. In Goa, photographer
Ritu Nanda's store, Camelot, continues to attract tourists, Indian and
foreign, while Sangolda, a lifestyle store, opened earlier this year and
Casa Goa, another lifestyle store that's been around for nearly a year
now, showcases Goan design in ceramics, lace and furniture.
"Indians
are becoming very design conscious but they're very price conscious too,"
says Abdullah Mohammad, managing director of The Home Store (THS) which
already has five branches in Delhi and opened one in Jaipur in August.
It plans to have 30 stores by 2003.
THS' USP,
however, is to put on the mass market well-designed home products at a
reasonable price. But the market is choc-a-bloc with products that straddle
an amazing price range: from 22-carat gold-plated beds (cost: Rs 2.75
lakh) retailing in Delhi to wrought iron double beds (cost: Rs 7,000);
from imported Italian marble (starting at Rs 200 a sq ft) to cement terrazzo
floors (cost: Rs 15 a sq ft); from imported fabric for curtains (Rs 4,400
a metre) to elegantly embroidered bamboo chicks (Rs 20 a sq ft), there
is something for every budget.
There is
a group of well-travelled people which is aware of trends globally,"
says architect Sonali Bhagwati. "Now you have nicely done up shops
with nice looking things." Adds architect and writer Gautam Bhatia:
"Earlier, if you were doing a bathroom you'd use white tiles. Now,
there's a glut in the market."
Ironically,
despite India's vast crafts tradition, it took globalisation and the opening
up of the economy to push Indian design. The boom in various imports from
hardwood floors to jacuzzis hammered home one message to Indian producers:
shape up or ship out. VIP Industries, the market leader in luggage, for
instance, launched a premium suitcase range just as US luggage brand Samsonite
came to India. (The US company sued but the case was dismissed).
The flipside,
unfortunately, is an abundance of imports and foreign catalogue "inspired"
goods. "This isn't design," snorts Bhatia, "it's consumerism."
From the consumer's point of view it's a windfall. Shoddy, over-priced
products are giving way to well-designed, well-priced goodies (imported
computer tables for as little as Rs 3,500 are far cheaper than anything
the local carpenter can hammer together). But this dependence on imports
could signal the end of many Indian companies. "We will end up as
a nation of imports unless Indian companies come up with global brands,"
warns Koshy.
That is
easier said than done. "There is a huge amount of talent in the Indian
design industry," says Amit Gupta, director of Vis a Vis, a design
gallery in Delhi. "Unfortunately, our designers are not getting the
freedom to experiment." Problems abound, the biggest being plagiarism:
what's to stop the competition from simply lifting your design? Gupta
tells of a designer who recently exhibited some really stunning glassware
at his gallery. A biggish company wanted to buy the designs but before
the deal could be signed, high-street retailers had begun flogging off
copies. "It's part of the game," shrugs Natasha Chaudhri, a
25-year-old Delhi College of Art graduate who, in March this year, opened
her design outlet, The Earth Shop, along with partner and co-designer
Shilpa Gupta. "The trick is to change and fast before the competition
can catch up," she says.
With lax
copyright laws it should surprise no one that last year only 2,500 original
designs were registered throughout India. India's crafts, meanwhile-with
a few notable exceptions-seem frozen as drawing room conversation pieces.
"Our emporia are stagnating," says Poonam Kalra, owner of design
shop I'm Design. Initiatives in low-cost housing and energy-saving alternatives
have remained mere experiments and the market seems geared only to a slick
urban audience, says Pinkish Shah.
Pg.2
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