Parlour Prattle

There was, of course, the slight matter of educating the lady of the house on the use of votives. But the store rose to the task willingly. At the end of the day, after all, it’s quite clear who the room belongs to.

Come into my parlour, says the lifestyle store of the day. Moving beyond the business of providing blissful window-shopping, they’re gearing up to style clients’ lives. ‘‘It’s a natural extension of what we do,’’ says Simran Lal, who looks after the retail, marketing and interior design services of Good Earth. Eight years ago, her mum Anita offered Mumbai and Delhi the kind of contemporary design so far spotted only in foreign magazines. Now, Simran, 32, and a Fashion Institute of Technology alumna, is ready to move one step ahead, into the home.

Call it the professionalisation of salesmanship.

If, so long, even the crummiest home store had a silver-tongued good-looker convincing you that that four-foot-high blue-and-gold vase was just what the doctor ordered for your living room, now there’s a whole design team ready to visit your apartment, suggest wall finishes, furniture layouts, upholstery colours, drape pleats, even the artefacts for the coffee tables.

But they baulk at being called interior decorators, they’d rather be known as lifestylists. ‘‘My clients are usually aware of international trends and have a good idea of what they want. But yes, they do depend on us to translate that idea into real space,’’ says Nilofer Rustomji of Trafford House, Mumbai.

Lal agrees. ‘‘Some people may be able to put together clothes very well, but they’re at an absolute loss when it comes to decor. That’s where we come in,’’ she says. ‘‘The process usually begins with a client walking into Verandah, our outlet in Delhi, and liking a particular look. We then create a storyboard using our furniture and accessories and advise her on the colours of the soft furnishings and the walls. It’s a very interactive process.’’

With most lifestyle stores today promoting distinct looks and catering to particular design sensibilities, it is a win-win situation for both client and customiser. Rima Bose of Mumbai, for instance, shopped around for several months before hitting on Rustomji to do up her house. ‘‘When we moved into our own house on Phoenix Mills High Street in central Mumbai, we wanted a lifestylist who would work closely with our architect in integrating all the artefacts we had collected from our travels around the world,’’ says the 50-year-old teacher.

‘‘The flat is an ‘L’-shaped duplex and I wanted two different kinds of ambience. For a formal space in the first half, Nilofer suggested a classic clean-cut sofa with heavy cushions. It lent the room a warm, welcoming air,’’ says Bose. ‘‘The other half is devoted to the Far East, with a wooden Chinese screen, a low divan and a finely carved teakwood coffee table.’’

Not all clients, though, are as open as Bose, and the best of the stylists’ work often remains anonymous. ‘‘The price of the trade,’’ laughs Ritu Saluja of Delhi’s House of Ishatvam, which recently started a full-fledged advisory service.

Interestingly, possibly because of the informal beginnings of the practice, few stores charge for their advice, especially if clients source their purchases through them. ‘‘We never hard sell. Our services are a value add-on,’’ says Poonam Gidwani, manager of Shilpa Kalanji’s Fusion Access in Mumbai.

If a particular element is unavailable, some will even tap their designer connections to source it. Lal, for instance, asked Raghuvendra Rathore to do the wrought iron beds for Jaisal Singh’s Sherbagh resort.

Higher disposable incomes, more stressed working lives, greater design awareness, foreign travel, all combine to make the future look good for lifestylists. ‘‘We can’t create taste in a person who doesn’t already have an awareness of what she wants,’’ says Rustomji. But with their well laid-out, expansive stores doing most of the pitching, it’s not often that they encounter clients who want to marry a baroque three-piece sofa set with contemporary tropical Asian styling.

‘‘If our clients want a certain look, we are more than happy to give it to them. But we usually advise them to go with a more uncluttered Zen feel,’’ says Purvi Parekh, owner of Transforme Design, a small cottage-like store in Mumbai, which sources accessories from Auroville in Pondicherry and Cinnamon in Bangalore and has its in-house design team work on the furniture.

Doesn’t this kind of customisation risk producing clone homes? The chances are high, admits Lal, who’s working on several different ‘Good Earthy’ looks. ‘‘But that’s where our sensitivities come in. Apart from the physical variables of light and space of the house, we have to consider the personalities of the people living there.’’

After all, you can take the home out of the store, but not the homebodies.