In Mumbai With Personal Shopper Monica Vaziralli by Caroline Phillips
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Mumbaikers (as in the residents of Mumbai, as Bombay is now known) love to shop. And the city is hyped as having joined the world’s premier shopping destinations. Designer shopping, they say, at bargain prices. Armed with personal shopper Monica Vaziralli, a chauffeur, air-conditioned car and large bag, I am a woman on a discovery mission. Is Mumbai the new Milan, Paris, London or New York?
Monica dispenses with emporiums offering carved elephants, markets selling pirated DVDs and polyester pashminas and shopping malls. Monica, an erstwhile interior decorator turned socialite, doesn’t do street markets and malls. But she does appear to know le tout Mumbai (population 18 million-ish). She also does boutiques and specialist shops and speaks Hindi, an asset in these parts - particularly since our first stop is at a backstreet tailor.
Monica organizes for my clothes to be copied – virtually for the cost of a Sunday newspaper - and picked up within hours. After that we visit art galleries (contemporary Indian art is booming), Indian designer fashion emporiums (think bejewelled gear) antique shops (many products freshly- made) and bookshops. I think we patronize most of Mumbai’s squillion or so shops.
Personal Favourites
After exhaustive research, I know my personal favourites. There’s The Courtyard’s chic shopping arcade in a Colonial building. (Abraham & Thakore jacket for a fiver and Art Karat’s theatrical Mughal-style baubles for more than that.) D Popli & Sons (there are lots of Poplis, so the D is important) selling precious and semi- precious jewellery and mountains of silver ware (which he will engrave gratis). The Neemrana shop with its white embroidered kurtas.
There’s also Kala Niketan where they sell silk and sarees, and 32 metres of ribbon for roughly a pound. Good Earth, a Conran-ish emporium in a converted old textile mill, offering Ayurvedic products and lap- top bags to furniture. And the Oxford Bookstore with its books, chai bar and handmade wrapping -paper.
Exhausted, we stop for lunch at Oh! Calcutta, which celebrates Calcutta’s cuisine. (Delicious curry in banana leaves.) Monica could have fooled me if she’d said it was Mumbai nosh. Either way, Mumbai is now (according to AA Gill) one of the world’s top ten destinations for food. He must have eaten here.
Shopaholic Stride
After lunch we do another million shops. If you require that Bollywood poster or classic Ambassador car, Monica is your lady. I test her. I want only burgundy cow hides, Colonial storm shades and oh, an abstract canvas. She obliges.
I’m into my shopaholic stride now. But Monica decrees that we should swim - at the Willingdon Club, her private (time-warp) club, where servants with birch switches brush the grass. (‘Spitting and nose blowing in the pool strictly prohibited,’ reads the sign.)After I leave Monica, I sneak off to the Oberoi mall for beaded evening bags (GBP 7) and Emma Hope-style slip-ons (GBP 15 a pair.)
Mumbai is not a premier shopping destination. And I could have done most of my shopping in Graham and Green and a little in Selfridges. But I’d have missed the extravagant Victorian gothic architecture, doing yoga in a public park, eating thali, the view from the top of the Sheraton and having henna tattoos. Not to mention coming home laden like an Indian buffalo…
See the quickly growing shopping district and book a stay at one of our luxury hotels in Mumbai.