There’s never a minute when Ramola Bachchan isn’t thinking about her brand Manre. “It’s more than just a restaurant,” she says, touring Manre in the morning hours, instructing her staff with a polite smile, and enjoying the sunlight streaming in generously through the large windows of her Italian restaurant that’s housed in New Delhi’s Select Citywalk.
While she works overtime to ensure that her restaurant doubles up as a brand, in her personal life too Bachchan finds that some of her personal accessories are branded. “It’s not that I can’t live without them, but yes, I’m glad, for example, that I own a Hermes Birkin bag. I’m very happy that I own it,” she reiterates. While the basic price of a Hermes bag is Rs 5 lakh, handcrafted bags from this brand sport a price tag of Rs 25 lakh.
Bachchan also has a wide range of sunglasses but loves Gucci in particular. “I suppose you also get used to brands, you value its name and you know that what your favourite brand offers means more than just how much you spend on it,” she says.
Gucci sunglasses, by the way, cost approximately Rs 25,000.
For someone who says she’s comfortable in a simple top and a pair of well-fitted jeans (“never mind the brand”), she’s sincerely proud of her collection of scarves, especially those from Christian Dior and Ferragamo. She carries them off elegantly, teaming them up with the simplest of outfits. The prices of these scarves range from Rs 10,000 and upwards.
Speaking of clothes, Bachchan prefers trousers and jeans and her favourite brand is 7 whose new range for the season includes “Charlize Flare in Soho” which costs $ 225. What makes 7 a hit with Bachchan is the emphasis given to the details, including the tiny Swarovski crystals that add an elegant, understated accent.
What Bachchan flaunts as her favourite is also Errazuriz, a wine from Chile, that Manre keeps and one which Bachchan consumes every other evening “after the day’s hard work at the restaurant”. The range begins from Rs 500 (by the glass).