Our Terms & Conditions | Our Privacy Policy
Jewellery designer Dipika A. believes her manifestation chanting exercise has finally paid off. About a month ago, a group of architects and interior designers completed what she calls, the “closet of my dreams”. Spread across 200 sq. ft in the “vastu-approved” south-west direction of her south Delhi farmhouse, the U-shaped walk-in closet—with a white Lemieux et Cie ottoman in the middle complementing the white walls and dark-wood flooring—is divided into three sections: What to Wear this Week, What to Wear this Season, and Bags and Jewellery.
Each section includes three ceiling-to-floor wardrobes, hidden behind translucent doors with inset lighting and access available only to Dipika through a biometric finger scan. She shows me her What to Wear this Week section. There are seven curated looks—each look for the day includes gymwear (for that Monday, she’d chosen Alo), officewear (grey Zara jacket, printed Gucci shirt and Cos jeans), eveningwear (a beige Stella McCartney dress) and a night suit (Versace), all hung on customised vintage print hangers, complete with matching shoes and accessories.
The What to Wear this Season section—from which she picks outfits for What to Wear This Week—is bigger, more crowded, with colour-coordinated long and short coats, capes, sweaters, shirts, sweatpants, leggings, hoodies, T-shirts, jeans, skirts, saris, tailored suit sets…. all organised by category. Among the 15 categories is “feeling”—oversized black and blue tops/kurtas for days she’s feeling bloated or “fat”.
Bags and Jewellery is comparatively sparse with 25 bags, including two Birkins, and some chunky Chanel and delicate Cartier jewellery.
“You see less jewellery because I don’t prefer wearing too much during winters (since it’s not too visible behind the layers),” says Dipika, 43, adding that she employed the services of four wardrobe organisers. Her next season’s clothes are stored in the basement. “Before I got this closet done, my clothes were hanging lifelessly in different rooms of our house; my husband was always complaining,” she laughs. “I wanted one space where I could walk in, mix and match outfits depending on my mood, or just sit on my ottoman and see all the things I have in one look. It’s like my own clothing store where everything is handpicked by me, for me.”
Her moodboard is not an exception. In the world of the rich, where money and access don’t have many limits, closets have long been an overcrowded space with shiny designer labels. What has changed now, more so after the pandemic, is the desire to have a closet that looks like a well-curated luxury retail store. And this growing desire is reflected in the emergence of niche platforms that offer wardrobe organising services.
“Earlier, people were more into redoing their bedrooms, living rooms; wardrobes were an afterthought,” says Kopal Dhir, the founder of Organise with Kopal, a space organising and decluttering service that has clients across metros.
Dhir, who started the business three years ago and has a team of four, charges ₹4,000-5,000 an hour; a wardrobe-organising exercise can take an entire day, depending on the size and number of items a client owns. Each month, she works with at least 10 clients. “Majority of people come to us now with one demand, ‘we want an aesthetic closet’. It’s been a concept in the West for some years now, but in India, it’s just getting started.”
This shift in perspective towards the home for clothes has a lot to do with social media, specifically Instagram. With the increase in Get Ready With Me Reels, celebrity closet selfies, and trending #closetorganizer and #closetgoals videos, the closet is no longer a private space but a dressing room that reflects one’s individuality and taste. And when you have extra cash to spare, you can turn your dream closet into a reality.
An independent chartered accountant, for instance, wanted a his-and-hers closet in her new apartment in Gurugram’s ultra-luxury DLF The Magnolias residential project to feel like a “sanctuary in the house”. When the 40-year-old asked Dhir to organise her closet, the mandate was simple: keep it colour- and occasion-coordinated, and minimal.
“I do a closet cleanse every month; I donate or give stuff away to friends and family,” the chartered accountant says, requesting anonymity, while showing me her collection of bags, including her latest addition, a classic Chanel flap bag. “It’s a good excuse to buy more. Plus, I always shop with my husband, whether in India or abroad, so it’s a good way to spend quality time together.”
The couple’s two-door closets are next to each other’s inside a big bathroom that comes with a bathtub placed next to a 3ft real-looking tree, an all-white marble table with an oval-light vanity mirror and marble drawers, which open to what looks like a small pop-up store straight out of Sephora. “I follow trends but I am also a moody dresser. So, when I see all these clothes in one go, I make a mental Pinterest board of what all I can pull together and make an outfit,” she says. “Plus, it’s just so calming.”
The pull of a tidy, organised closet has long been well documented. Marie Kondo has time and again reminded her followers how one sight of neatly hung or folded clothes can help bring a sense of calmness, even joy.
That’s what Nitin Mohan Srivastava, founder of Gurugram-based lifestyle management company Pinch, felt once he took his own company’s help to organise his closet, which included close to 1,400 shirts. “If I liked a shirt, I would buy it in every colour in one go, except yellow… that’s a colour I like but it doesn’t suit me. Same with shoes; I have Onitsuka Tiger in every colour and style, except yellow. Those people call me whenever they get a new pair in the shop,” he laughs. “But over the years, after covid especially, I realised accumulating stuff doesn’t spark joy. Letting go does; it makes you feel like a better person.” Today, he has over 100 shirts.
His company offers wardrobe organising services across the country. Over 50% of his 100-plus clients, mostly high-net-worth individuals (HNIs; people with investable assets of $1 million or more) and ultra-high-net-worth individuals (UHNIs), request for wardrobe organising—some who know exactly how many clothes they have and when they bought it, and others who’ve lost track of what they own. “We’ve had clients like one in Mumbai who has literally everything Hermès makes, including a dog collar (she doesn’t even have a dog), and one who lives in a 5BHK apartment and all the rooms are walk-in closets,” he says. “Beyond the aesthetic part of it, organising wardrobe helps people make one less decision in a day: What to wear?”
That’s a trend Gurugram-based Gayatri Gandhi, a KonMari consultant and founder of clutter management firm Joy Factory, has recently noticed as well. “People want us to make curated sections where their entire outfits, clothes, shoes, accessories and shoes, are pre-matched and ready to wear, saving time on decision making and making daily dressing easy and effortless,” says Gandhi, who, along with her team, handles close to 25 wardrobe organising projects per month, with requests coming from not just the metros but even tier-two cities like Surat, Ahmedabad, Chandigarh and Jamshedpur. They charge ₹8,000-10,000 per hour.
“The other common request is the careful display of their luxury shoe and handbag collections. Given the extensive nature of the branded collections that majority of them own, many prefer a high-end boutique-style arrangement, complete with proper dust bags, dedicated shelving and elegant storage solutions. Some also ask for their entire wardrobe to be digitally catalogued, allowing them to virtually mix and match outfits or access their collection remotely.”
The remote control is on Dipika’s mind as well, along with a small setup for a coffee machine. “I’m not doing this for posting on social media; I don’t even have a public account. I’m doing this for myself. I spend so much money and effort picking these beautiful clothes; they do bring me joy,” she says. “Just imagine waking up every day, entering your closet and seeing these nicely hung clothes. Won’t that be a good start to your day?”
Images are for reference only.Images and contents gathered automatic from google or 3rd party sources.All rights on the images and contents are with their legal original owners.
Aggregated From –
Comments are closed.