Shweta Kapur’s clothes are conversation-inspiring. So is her home

When designer Shweta Kapur opens the door to her first-floor apartment on a quiet, leafy stretch of Maharani Bagh, Delhi, two jet-black pugs, Leo and Max, announce themselves first. “This is really their house,” she laughs. Kapur, the founder of cool-girl label 431-88, has lived here for three years since moving out of her family home—long enough to shape the flat into her haven.

The apartment, which originally comprised four bedrooms, now has three: she merged two into an expansive master bedroom, turned another into a guest room (which she fondly calls the “dumping room” because she seldom has visitors), and the third into a den with a coffee bar and TV. The interiors, quiet and composed, reflect her preference for clean lines and a controlled palette. And though she is in the process of helping her husband redo his bachelor pad just down the road, turning it into a home for two, this space remains her sanctuary. “There were football jerseys and those stoles with the team names everywhere,” says Kapur. “I said, sorry, we can’t live like 20-year-old boys anymore, so we’re renovating it. But even when we move out, it works for me because I can come here everyday and do my thinking. It’s my cave.”

The tour begins in the spacious living room anchored by a round sofa, the first piece she bought for the apartment. “It’s so that everyone gets to talk to each other while sitting. To encourage conversations.” The effect is sculptural but soft, a convivial space where she hosts wine nights or the annual Christmas lunch or dinner with her school friends, complete with a tree and a Secret Santa present exchange. To the side sits a console table topped with a large, textured bowl, small artworks, candles, and a hardcover tome on Ann Demeulemeester. “Everything had to be black, white, beige,” she says. “I think better around these colours. It calms me down. Otherwise, it just gets overstimulating.”

The sofas face a spare white wall, against which rest decorative plumes mounted on poles from The Flame Store in Goa. “Everyone hates them, but I’m obsessed. It fulfils my need for art until I find my perfect piece,” she says. While bringing them over, she convinced the airline staff that they were heirlooms: “I told them that they’re my late grandmother’s last gift to me. I was like, ‘Can you please make sure it’s transported safely?’ And the airline person was like, ‘Yeah, yeah, ma’am, of course.’”

There’s also more serious art that dots the apartment: in the living and dining areas, passageways, and bedrooms. Kapur inherited a suite of works by MF Husain from her father, a collector, including several limited-edition serigraphs from Husain’s Theorama series, now framed in the hallway that leads to the master bedroom. “My dad has imposed these extreme rules on me,” she says with a grin. “I can only have one or two artists in the house, so it looks like a cohesive collection. I may not agree with him, but he’s a bully when it comes to art.”

Her own cave revolves around curves and arches. The master bedroom, created by merging two former bedrooms, is reserved only for bedtime and Sundays. “I wanted to take the concept of the round couch from the living room forward and have these arches in the bedroom,” she says, pointing to the line of arches that frame the windows. Here, the ceiling, the wooden wardrobes, and even an oversized mirror in the corner echo the shape.

In contrast to the rest of the house, the den—her “coffee room/working room”—is painted a deep purple hue that was achieved by mixing three shades together. She had the wardrobes removed and replaced with an espresso counter. “I love coffee,” she proclaims. Her mornings start with grinding Japanese beans by hand, though sometimes “it’s any beans that go into the machine.” The shelves above the counter are lined with books and mementos from their travels, including a pair of bear plushies gifted to them mid-flight on their honeymoon by an attendant.

A balcony connects the den to the living room and doubles as a plant nursery. “The used coffee grounds become khaad. They’re good for the plants,” she explains. The most precious among them is a fiddle fig, the first plant she ever bought, which nearly died when she tried keeping it in her bedroom. “It was down to three or four leaves. I used to sing to it and everything, but it was in really bad shape. Then, I put it here next to all the plant friends because I saw on Instagram that plants love plants. And it’s been thriving ever since. It’s become this bushy little fella,” she says, pointing proudly.

If the plants thrive outside, the real rulers of the house are inside: Max, the cuddler, and Leo, “an absolute brat” who delights in leaping into puddles on rainy-day walks. “They’re from the same litter but have two distinct personalities.” They refuse to sleep anywhere else, which means when Kapur eventually shifts into the house she and her husband are renovating, she will continue to spend half her days here with them. “They just want their own space.”

Kapur starts her days at five with an hour of meditation followed by yoga in the living room or a run outdoors, then breakfast with her husband before she divides her time between home and her factory in Faridabad. “Everything design-related is done here in the first half of the day,” she says. “Sometimes my team comes too. For me now, it’s like an in-between home, or a home-meets-studio.” Sundays are her most productive days, which she spends plotting the week ahead. “I strategise my week and block everything on Sundays, so the rest of the week is fairly chill. Because then it’s like clockwork.”

The house mirrors her current state of mind: calmer, sharper, stripped down. She’s been meditating seriously, and it feeds into her work. “I meditate in order to discover myself, and that helps me find what I really want to do. Now, I want to bring that same authentic messaging to the brand,” she says. At 431-88, she’s preparing what she calls a relaunch, making the label “more sophisticated, stripped down further”.

“When I started 431-88, it was my baby. Now it’s become like this teenager with its own personality who is heading into its twenties.” The sari, in particular, is at the heart of her vision. “I want people to not get intimidated by the sari. Not be like, oh, I can’t do it, it’s too much. I want to strip that narrative.” She points to the kimono as an example of a garment once considered traditional that is now global and every day. “That’s what I want to do with the sari.”