Jewel Box

Interior designer Ruchi Sharma borrows some shine from the products at Fiona Solitaires to give them a stunning retail space in New Delhi that triumphs over its compact size.

- Rupali Sebastian

Sometimes retail design becomes as much creating the exterior as the interiors — as it did for interior designer Ruchi Sharma of Mumbai-based Ruchi S Design when long-time client Fiona Solitaires asked her to design their showroom in New Delhi’s Greater Kailash. Notwithstanding the tiny footprint of the store-to-be (1,000 sq ft), the potential of its facade excited her, from the point of leveraging it to create the right buzz for the brand in a sea of almost 300 retail establishments. “Only New Delhi could have offered such a facade in a compact location,” she exults. “What I realized is, even though other shops, too, enjoyed such a frontage, they had only put up their signages and not treated the entire facade. I decided to change that,” says the designer who likes to compose her projects around a key central element — which, in this case, was the elevational treatment.