SRIMOYI BHATTACHARYA

Luxury Advisor, Author, Chairperson at Indo-French Chamber of Commerce 

Having known Srimoyi since her days leading one of India’s top fashion PR companies, Peepul Advisory, I’ve long admired her style and the unflappability with which she’d conduct herself in her people-heavy, high-stress role. Obviously, Sri is ridiculously good at all that comes with her job – leading and representing her roster of brands, quick adaptability, firefighting crises, smoothening ruffled feathers. But most of all, Srimoyi is loved in the business for her personal grace, for wielding her superpowers with both elegance and generosity. 

In this same spirit her book, Pitch Perfect: How to Create a Brand People Cannot Stop Talking About, condenses 15 years of her professional learnings to help readers keep up in our hyper-connected world. Most recently, Srimoyi’s appointment as Chairperson of the Indo-French Chamber of Commerce's Comité Luxe marked a full circle moment, a meeting of the personal and professional, and a coming together of her dual identities as a French-born Indian. 

Effortlessly gorgeous, Sri's style asserts effervescence, reflecting her many lives across Paris, New York, Bombay, Delhi, and now, Goa. And equally her jewellery speaks to her style, her appreciation of craftsmanship, the stories she's drawn to, and her physical environment.

 

Natasha: So, I know you forever, but I also feel like I don’t know your story at all.

Srimoyi: I'm a proud Bengali, born and brought up in Paris. My parents met and fell in love there in the late 1960s and decided to make France home. I lived there for the first 30 years of my life, worked there, and I think those were very instrumental years in honing my love for fashion and my work. 

I've been in PR for now, an indecent 28 years. Not very many people know this, but I started working in a tech PR company. I was pitching cable modems and the first generation of technology that made the Internet in Paris. I had no idea what I was talking about, but that's why I think I became so good at my job. Because when I started talking about things that I love, it was so much easier, you know?

Across agencies and jobs, I learned the business of PR, best practices and standards of servicing, with bosses who were incredible mentors. Then I moved to New York for a very high-profile job, working at a family-run hospitality group. Those were some of the best years of my career, I was exposed to anything a publicist can dream of. I had the best bosses, they just loved anything that would bring them visibility. I met a lot of people, and I loved every minute of it.

And then I decided to take the plunge and open my own company, along with a friend. In 2008, I decided to move to India and extend the company. I think I survived for so long in one field because I kept being in movement. So, I worked in PR in Paris, in New York and then when I moved here, in Bombay, Delhi, and now, Goa.  

NK:  What made you move to India? 

SB: Because I always wanted to work in India. Always. When I was growing up in Paris and when I connected with fashion, there was this big Japanese wave of designers, and I always wondered why we never had our day in the sun. There was so much fascination about India, the Indian aesthetic, yet there was nothing really anchoring it. 

NK: And what made you move from Bombay to Delhi to Goa.

SB: With Goa, there was a thirst for discovery, a taste for adventure. Honestly, not very much more. We just consistently pursued quality of lifestyle when I moved here, and I felt that I only gained. In Delhi, we loved the space and the life in a colony now in Goa, the connection to nature. Bombay was a great landing platform, professionally and personally. That's where I met my husband, life took shape in Bombay, and we flourished workwise. Delhi was great in terms of company expansion. It all happened very organically.  

NK: And so, let's talk about your style, because it's obviously got all these many layers. How do you approach style? 

SB: I would say that I love prints, and I love colour. And for years when I worked in Paris and New York, I wore a lot of black and beige. Now I'm very unapologetic about wearing as much colour as I can. And yes print, which is very much a lot of my wardrobe. I love dresses, anything that feels, very feminine or delicate, that may not be necessarily vintage but references vintage styles.  

NK: And having lived in so many different places, do you feel like your style is led by where you are in the world?

SB: Very much so. And I love that. I changed my style when I moved to Delhi, obviously, because of seasons. I loved wearing my woolens again and a coat. I love layers, so that that always works. It was also a reflection of working style, as I went from Paris to New York to India. It all became a lot more relaxed and transitioning from duty to off-duty started meshing quite seamlessly. 

NK: I've seen your various homes in magazines, and you love dressing up your spaces as well. Do you also feel like moving to different places changes a lot how you dress up your home. 

SB: It does. I think I'm a little bit of a chameleon. I love to embrace the atmosphere or the pulse of the city. And I think in Delhi it was a little over the top, you know, the colours and in the way, the house was put together. It always felt very dressed up. There were flowers everywhere, candles. Whereas in Goa it's more in sync with the outdoors, with nature, flowers are foraged from the garden and the fabrics are a lot more natural. It just feels airier. 

 

NK: Speaking of changing things up often, that's not always the case with jewellery, we often buy with a certain longevity in mind.

SB: No. And you're absolutely right. I think that that, that sense of longevity didn't quite work out for me because I think with every city there was a sense of occasion that is very different than Goa. And I think that I'm more and more drawn towards lighter, easier pieces to wear literally from work to the beach. I'm a lot more aware of not wearing heavy pieces because I physically prefer to wear lighter pieces all the time. So, Goa changed my style and my wardrobe. I tend to wear easier clothes, less fitted, airier. And I feel the same way about jewellery. 

NK: And so, what are the pieces that withstood all this change? 

SB: Well, not to be leading in any way, but clearly your pieces have really stood the test of all cities because they tripped with me from Paris to Panjim. And quite effortlessly, because they stand out in every city – in Paris for style, and in Goa for, for airiness and for that lightness that you want around you. 

I also really love to wear uncut (diamonds) because I just love things that feel old but may not necessarily be old. And it's so unusual when I travel, it really catches the eye. I find these timeless as well.

 

NK: Is there any jewellery that you reach for on rotation.

SB: Honestly, there's your pieces. Then I love homegrown fashion jewellery. And my strand of Chanel pearls that I can very easily wear with anything. 

NK: Are these pieces you bought on occasion?

SB: All my buys are fairly impulsive, but there's always a feeling of occasion because I always like to feel like I'm celebrating something. So, all the pieces that I got from you – and I have now quite a few – were moments, and some of them were during lockdown.So, I remember those pieces also because of those moments. 

NK: What really draws you in when it comes to jewellery? 

SB: I think I love pieces that are a little storied like looking at a piece and thinking, wow, how was this made. And then the next thing is how light it feels. Those are the things that draw me to a piece.  

NK: There’s your nose pin, which is very much a part of you.

SB: So actually, that has a story. Many years ago, we would visit Calcutta every summer, which was monsoon, dreadful monsoon in Calcutta. And there was this one day, I was maybe 7 years old, and my parents had to go somewhere, and they left me with our helper, very sweet lady. And I told her that I wanted to pierce my nose, so she went ahead. She burnt a needle and when my parents came back, I had a thread around my nose. 

I wore my nosepin through my school in Paris. Everybody thought that I was a precursor to the trend for piercing when there was nothing like it. And yeah, I've always loved and played around with nose pins. Most of them are gifted by my husband and I love that it’s a very unusual gift. It's a piece that's always very close to my heart. 

 

NK: Other than that, are there any pieces that you wear constantly, everyday? 

SB: So, I'll tell you the one thing that I wear always is your Initial Charm Bracelet. I wear that every day. It was a gift from my husband, the first piece I got of yours, and I’d wear it with my watch and now I wear it without it. I miss having something on my I wrist as I don't wear a watch all the time in Goa so I always wear this. I don't know why I'm looking for other examples, I wear your pieces all the time. 

 

By Natasha Khurana

Photography Kirti Virmani