A city-wise shopping guide for your NRI cousins

December in India is a social season perhaps like no other—a blur of weddings, family reunions, and friends flying in for “just a quick trip” that’s a minimum two weeks long—all of which involve a lot of card-swiping. But the most interesting stores here aren’t the ones with billboard campaigns or the polished digital storefronts that dominate your Instagram ads. They’re tucked-away studios, design dens, and hybrid gallery-museum-boutiques where the interiors are good enough to count as sightseeing.

Across the country, a new wave of boutiques, studio-shops, and concept spaces is quietly defining what Indian retail looks like now. They’re intimate, design-forward, and full of things you won’t stumble upon unless someone tells you exactly where to go. Whether you’re panic shopping for a last-minute gift to take to your in-laws’ or looking for spots to take your NRI cousins who land with one suitcase but leave with three, below is our city-wise cheat sheet to the most compelling places to shop—the ones that reward wandering, lingering, and touching everything before you leave.

Shopping in Mumbai

Mumbai’s shopping scene mirrors the city itself: sprawling, contradictory, wildly textured. The Swadesh flagship housed in the iconic Eros Theatre building at Churchgate has become the city’s ode to contemporary craft—housing fashion, home decor, textiles, jewellery, and more, created by some of the country’s most reputed artisans and craftspeople. The newly opened Nilaya Anthology in Lower Parel taps into the city’s obsession with interiors, being India’s largest luxury destination for decor at 1,00,000 sq ft. Expect to see everything from rugs and ceramics to lighting and furniture pieces that’ll make you wish you had a trust fund to dip into.

And then there’s Khotachiwadi, the East Indian village preserved in the middle of the metropolis, where designer James Ferreira has worked out of his heritage bungalow for decades. It’s less “store visit”, more “drop into a creative’s world”. While you’re there, you can also hop, skip, and jump to 47-A, the neighbourhood gallery, to check out their latest exhibit. Across the sea link in Bandra, stores like Teatro Dhora, Bhavya Ramesh, and Two Extra Lives form a kind of micro-ecosystem of jewellery, accessories, and vintage garments where the curation feels personal, not algorithmic.

Shopping in Jaipur

Jaipur has always been a tourist favourite, but recently it’s become something else: a magnet for young creatives, designers, and preservationists who are ensuring the city’s most interesting shopping now happens in spaces that function as cultural studios as much as stores.

Nila House, for example, is a semi-traditional Rajasthani haveli in Ashok Nagar restored by Bijoy Jain. Here you can learn about the craft of indigo as well as shop tableware, home textiles, kidswear, and toys that spotlight the blue dye in creative new forms. Down the road, Virginia Borrero de Castro’s Parampara houses a mix of Indian and international brands, including her eponymous label, which combines playful prints with breezy silhouettes. Sunita Shekhawat’s new flagship, meanwhile, houses a very modern Museum of Meenakari Heritage and has beautiful hand-painted frescoes on the experiential shopping floor. It’s the kind of place where visitors come for jewellery but leave talking about technique. And within the City Palace’s walls is the PDKF Store, a contemporary label that reimagines Rajasthani crafts on easy, wearable silhouettes, while its sister concern, The Palace Atelier, acts as a curated design salon where indie brands get the royal treatment. Yes, you will want to take pictures in every corner.

Shopping in Goa 

Goa’s retail culture has shifted from hippie markets to boutique modernity. The newer stores feel like extensions of the state’s creative migration—designers setting up shop by the sea, crafting clothes and objects that reflect a slower, salt-tinted life. Shops like Paper Boat Collective (housed in a 100-year-old Portuguese villa in Sangolda) and The Flame Store (Candolim) favour warm, multi-brand curations that mirror a well-travelled friend’s wardrobe. 

Whalesong in Parra is the antidote to beach-print chaos, bringing together art, lighting, furniture, and fashion in a quiet gallery-like setting, while the newly opened Noun in Siolim has “retail residencies” that offer temporary curations of apparel, accessories, and jewellery by independent designers. The debut edition, which is on till December 15, spotlights names, like Chola, Helm, Lafaani, Lmnoh, and Project Qaafi. Its next chapter (December 18 to January 31) will include Button Masala, Manish Arora, Malai Biomaterials, and Pieux, among others.

Then there are designers like Savio Jon, who has shelves piled with his airy, soft garments perfect for coastal climes as well as vintage home decor and jewellery that he collects from around the world at 280 Siolim, and makers like Thomas the Potter in Panjim, whose unique ceramics make the best gifts (and souvenirs).

Shopping in New Delhi

Delhi’s retail landscape is in its architectural era. Raw Mango’s Chhatarpur space is practically a pilgrimage site—a museum-like arrangement of textiles within a stark white shell. Bodice’s minimalist flagship in Vasant Kunj offers the counterpoint: calm, cool, and compositionally precise, reflecting the brand’s interest in structure over ornament.

But Delhi’s Dhan Mill compound has become its own little cultural district—a cluster of independent stores that feel more Brooklyn warehouse district than traditional Indian market. Here, Rkive City reimagines post-consumer textiles as streetwear; Almost Gods injects subculture energy into Indian fashion; Claymen shapes emotions into ceramics; and Cord, Collectklove, and Nappa Dori (with Dori Café) round out a design landscape that’s less about shopping and more about hanging out, absorbing, and people-watching.

Shopping in Hyderabad

Hyderabad’s distinct glamour comes with a sense of pride in its handloom and craft traditions, which makes visiting Gaurang Shah in Jubilee Hills feel like opening a textile epic. The designer’s flagship spanning over 22,000 sq ft houses a museum space for textile aficionados and womenswear, menswear, and home decor. Swadesh’s Hyderabad outpost, too, is located close by. For design-forward jewellery that combines traditional Indian elements with Art Deco and Victorian accents, look no further than Swapna Mehta. Her by-appointment-only Jubilee Hills studio is the perfect spot for anyone looking for the most unique pieces that you can’t pinpoint on a map or a timeline (her specialty is amalgamating different vintage jewellery parts into one).

At Banjara Hills, Theory of Everything has a selection of the country’s coolest contemporary designers, including Hannah Khiangte, Quarter, Leh Studios, and Rishta by Arjun Saluja, all under one roof. If it’s garments with a personality you’re looking for, Whencut Goddamn’s quirky, pop-art-like garments are also in the neighbourhood.

Shopping in Chennai 

The best shopping spots in Chennai are not so obvious: if you know, you know. For saris, while the tourists tend to flock to the big Panagal Park showrooms like Nalli or Pothys, Sundari Silks in T Nagar is where you’ll find a more curated offering. Textile artist and designer Ritika Arya Jain’s new boutique on Khader Nawaz Khan Road is a minimalist sanctuary. Designed by Faisal Manzur, the space borrows from Arya Jain’s fluid designs and soft hues. Close by, Osman Abdul Razak brings a similar ethos to men’s tailoring: pieces that are architectural, precise, and timeless in a lush 900 sq ft space (also designed by Manzur) that transports you to a Milanese tailor house.

For something futuristic, head to Biskit in Adyar, which offers graphic and irreverent streetwear pieces (only 21 pieces of a style from each collection are up for grabs). And for a limited time only, Erode, the handloom-forward label, is setting up shop at Camp on 13th Avenue in Chetpet until December 21.