Five luxury aficionados – Ashish Soni, Sussanne Khan, Sunil Sethi, Kalyani Chawla and Vinod Nair – have created hand-crafted luxury and aesthetic lifestyle installations where the visual experience matches the sensory one. Backed by Chivas Regal, the Alchemy project was unveiled at The Leela Palace hotel in New Delhi. Each was given a chance to express the power of smell, touch, taste, sight and sound. Soni, the alchemist for smell, has created three varieties of perfumes. For the seasoned designer, fragrance has a direct correlation with fashion. “On a personal level, I love perfumes,” he says. .
“Of the three different perfumes, one is contemporary for somebody who breaks the rule. There is a very complex, old school traditional British perfume. It is like the British tailoring which goes into my work. The third, I have taken from Chris Bartlett, who is a bespoke perfumer. He specifically developed it for my taste just like I do my clothes.” It took Soni six-seven months of research and effort.
Khan has come up with unique options to deck up the interiors. She claims even if somebody is visually impaired, he can feel the textures of her work. “That is what I wanted this room to be.
The idea was to decorate the room with things one does not imagine. Walls don’t have green grass. Here they have. This is about mixing creativity; something new and imagination going crazy. My circus mirror is like you see an illusion. When you are intoxicated you can see yourself as woozy.”
On the exquisite leather trunks, she says, antiquated travel bags were recreated. “In olden days, people used trunks. So I recreated trunks to give that vintage look. It is all aged. It was like blending of characters. Most of the furniture is new but I wanted to age it. Even leather is aged; it is tarnished, stained with tea and put out under the sun. It is Italian leather sourced from Mumbai.”
Craftsmanship on bar
For Sethi, being a part of this project meant unleashing his design creativity on a bar. “I have done installations before but it is the first time that I have created a bar. I havecreated a bar in different guises, decoding the sense of taste. Flavours can have memories and linger on for years. I tried to create a structure of cabinets. On the left hand side, there are cabinets filled with leather and cinnamon. This one is hand crafted luxury,” he exclaims.
The beauty is that we have used metal and Scotland peat to create layers on the surface.”
For Chawla, the challenge was on presenting exquisite silverware. “For me silver signifies celebration and beauty. What we also did, was using silver which is gold plated. God’s biggest gift is when you have sight and vision. Some people have sight but don’t have vision. So I am trying to bridge that gap.”
