Ladies Who Launch

Sparklingly erudite with impregnable ambition, these lady bosses are transforming the way we shop.

- Tanya Mehta

On a particularly toasty afternoon, the deafening din of weekend traffic is silenced as you step into the cool oasis of Patkar Bungalow, a mammoth Colonial style house in Bandra, Mumbai. “I went to an exhibition where it was a chaotic sea of people pouncing at any item they could get their hands on, a lady even yanked the dupatta off my neck. That’s when I decided this was no way to shop,” says Aarti Patkar, the owner of Patkar Bungalow, and the founder of Vintage Garden – a pop-up shopping paradise that takes place at the derriere of the house.

The act of shopping is said to release serotonin in your brain that alleviates your mood. As an experience it is known to distract, to make you feel in control. We call it retail therapy for a reason, it is therapeutic. Sophie Kinsella, author of Confessions of a Shopaholic summarises this emotion most aptly, “That moment. That instant when your fingers curl around the handles of a shiny, uncreased bag – and all the gorgeous new things inside it become yours. It’s like going hungry for days, then cramming your mouth full of warm buttered toast. It’s like waking up and realising it’s the weekend. It’s like the better moments of sex. Everything else is blocked out of your mind. It’s pure, selfish pleasure.”