SONAM IN LONDON

From summer days spent picnicking at Hampstead Heath and shooting her next film in next-door Scotland’s freezing winter, to spending nights on end locked-down in her Notting Hill townhouse with her husband—style icon and superstar Sonam Kapoor Ahuja shares the anxieties and joys of the last year as she contemplates how to use her platform better and create a more conscious future, finds Radhika Seth

- Radhika Seth

I want to go down in posterity for the right reasons,” says Sonam Kapoor Ahuja. “When people think of me, they shouldn’t only think that I changed the way people look at fashion in India.” Reclining on a rust-red velvet sofa at her sumptuous home in London’s Notting Hill, the style icon and actor is in a philosophical mood on the day I meet her—and with good reason.

Schiaparelli Structured Cape Structured cape embellished with an embroidered three-dimensional gold adornment “cascading hair”, tribute to Elsa Schiaparelli hooded-veil created in 1938. The piece is worn with a fitted black mini dress that also features the “cascading hair” embroidery. Shop Now

When I arrived over an hour ago, through the drizzle of an early summer’s day, she answered the door with a smile, fresh-faced and refreshingly low-key in leggings and a VegNonVeg T-shirt (from the sneaker store co-founded by her husband Anand Ahuja, along with the clothing label Bhaane). She apologised for the heart-shaped balloons that crowded her living room—a surprise from her parents on the eve of her 36th birthday—and proved to be the perfect host, fixing me a coffee and bowl of namak para as she told me about the year that was.