MY LIFE, MY STYLE
Eiesha Bharti Pasricha’s glorious Notting Hill home matches her bright, colourful wardrobe
‘Iam Indian, but I feel very British,’ says the lifestyle investor Eiesha Bharti Pasricha over tea and cake at the palatial west-London house she shares with her two children and her husband Sharan Pasricha, the founder of Ennismore, a hospitality group that owns Gleneagles and the Hoxton hotels. ‘We were introduced at a New Year’s Eve party in Goa and it just went from there,’ Eiesha says. Their six-daylong nuptials in New Delhi were attended by 1,000 guests. ‘A big fat Indian wedding!’ This summer, the couple will have been married for 10 years.
Eiesha was born in Scotland, just outside Glasgow, but at seven weeks old, returned to Delhi, where her father Sunil Bharti Mittal runs the country’s secondlargest telecoms network. ‘My roots are in India, but we used to visit the UK every summer, so it has always been a big part of my life,’ she says. As a teenager, her
interest in fashion was piqued by the beautiful fabrics and block prints used by local designers. ‘Everyone knows that in India, we believe in colour, and that is very evident in my life today. We only wear white when we are in mourning and black perhaps for a very formal meeting. If you are seen to be wearing neutral colours or toned-down colours people actually think something is wrong. No matter how much or how little you have, you celebrate life by wearing bright clothes.’
At 16, Eiesha was sent to Cheltenham Ladies’ College in Gloucestershire, before taking a degree in politics, Italian and French at the University of Bath, during which she spent a year in Paris as a sales assistant for Louis Vuitton. ‘I had expected to be in the marketing team, so when they handed me a uniform and a badge, I called up my dad sobbing,’ she admits. ‘He said that if I really loved fashion I had to start from the shop floor, because the customer is king. I’d sometimes arrive at
5.30am to unload stock from the lorries – it gave me an amazing grounding and helped me understand luxury.’
Determined to pursue a career in the fashion industry, she decided that the best way to do so was as an investor to back new talent. ‘I wanted to put my business sense and my passion for fashion to good use,’ she says. Mentored by Sian Westerman, the co-chair of the British Fashion Trust, she was introduced to London’s rising design stars, including Jonathan Saunders and Roksanda Ilincic, who she backed to open a David Adjaye-designed flagship on Mount Street in Mayfair. She has also invested in lifestyle brands including Zanzan eyewear, a technology start-up called Beautystack and the flower-delivery service Flowerbx. ‘For me, fashion and lifestyle go hand in hand,’ she says. ‘When I look at this house, and the interiors, so much of the renovation was influenced by my time with Roksanda – from the bright colours she used, to the way her catwalk shows were styled.’
When it came to creating her own family
home, Eiesha had her heart set on Notting Hill. ‘I’ve wanted to live here since I was 15 years old, and it’s a cliché, but the movie was a big reason,’ she says. ‘It’s also one of the last few neighbourhoods in London that’s quintessentially British, we can walk our kids to school every day and I love the local restaurants.’ She describes the fouryear renovation project as ‘overwhelming’ – while maintaining the house’s Victorian façade, her builders gutted everything else and enlarged the space from 3,700 to almost 10,000 square feet, adding a double basement and two lifts. One floor houses a gym and a sophisticated snug, complete with a giant velvet sofa, a fully stocked bar and a cigar-smoking terrace, while another is made up almost entirely of Eiesha’s clothes archive – handbags and shoes galore, neatly stacked sweaters and rail upon rail of multicoloured dresses.
Eiesha eschewed big-name designers in favour of the interior stylist Charles Mellersh, to whom she was introduced by a friend. ‘I was very clear in my mind what I wanted in terms of styling vision, and I didn’t want anyone to stamp their blueprint on the house,’ she says. ‘Charles spends time learning who you are and how you want to live in the space as a family, from entertaining to doing homework. We travelled the world together for two years, adding to the furniture I had collected over my lifetime, and then he was instrumental
in helping me weave it all together.’
The result is a breathtaking and varied property that manages to feel simultaneously warm and lived-in. As we walk around the open-plan kitchen and living-room, Eiesha highlights the mix: ‘The bookshelves were custom-made by a joiner – they were inspired by Karl Lagerfeld’s bookshelf – those are my Ai Weiwei pots, the sofa is from BDDW, the cushions are from fabric that I’ve sourced and then I got them made, that’s from Stockholm, this is from an Italian designer, the rug is from Clerkenwell, this is Brodie Neill…’
In the dining-room stands a bespoke table made by Marcin Rusak, featuring real flowers embedded in resin, a brass drinks cabinet by Ilse Crawford and a Michael Anastassiades pendant light, while the striking art collection includes pieces by Cornelia Parker, Brent Wadden and Alexander Calder, to name just a few. Eiesha is currently working on another exciting project in Notting Hill – a restaurant that will be launching next year. ‘It’s a work in progress,’ she says, ‘but ultimately it’s about me wanting to give back to the community.’
Eiesha’s diverse tastes are also evident in her wardrobe. As well as Roksanda’s statement dresses, she loves wearing pieces by Phoebe Philo, the Row, Alex Eagle, Prada, Miu Miu, Racil and Jessica McCormack, who she turned to when her wedding ring needed to be reset. ‘It’s about practicality – I’m not somebody who will wear four-inch heels and suffer because it looks great,’ she says. ‘If you see me doing a school drop-off, I will be wearing the baggiest Frame jeans with an Off-White T-shirt, New Balance trainers, my hair in a bun and a slick of red lipstick. I am a woman who’s on the go.’ And it doesn’t look like she will be slowing down any time soon…