The Le Sutra journey began on a rainy July night in 2005 when our director was stranded in a hotel as floods brought the bustling metropolis of Mumbai to a grinding halt. While waiting for the floodwaters to recede, he sat in solitude, planning the renovation of a hotel he owned in an affluent suburb, Pali Hills.
While the hotel was in a great location and housed two popular restaurants namely Out of the Blue and Olive Bar & Kitchen, it was in desperate need of a makeover. Eager to push the envelope, he discovered that there were no art hotels in India, and the few that did exist abroad were hotels with art but not designed as theme projects.
Armed with the desire of creating the world’s first Indian Art Hotel, he assembled a team of designers from the country’s top design school, the National Institute of Design, to help him realise this vision. The brief was to weave threads of Indian philosophy, mythology, and history into art that would adorn the rooms, resulting in a one-of-a-kind hospitality experience.
After much deliberation, it was decided that each of the three floors of the three-story hotel would be themed after one of the three gunas of Indian philosophy namely Tamas, Rajas and Sattva. Following that, another director was brought on board to work with the team to refine the concept and further define the characteristics of each guna, which would serve as themes for each of the sixteen rooms. Dr Art+Design, a Mumbai-based design firm, then collaborated with 120 artists, sculptors, and designers to create the paintings, sculptures, and art installations that give each room its own personality.
ANJOLIE ELA MENON / India's leading contemporary artist
Nearly five years after that rainy July night, Anjolie Ela Menon, a world-renowned Indian painter, and Mallika Sarabhai, a world-renowned dancer, inaugurated Le Sutra. The project’s execution so moved Menon that she hugged the art director and congratulated the team on completing what many believed was impossible. Le Sutra quickly established itself as one of the best hotel in Mumbai, attracting celebrity guests such as Oscar-winning filmmaker Baz Lurhmann and award-winning Australian artist Vincent Fantauzzo. They travelled to Mumbai to paint a mural on the hotel’s exterior wall, a portion of which still stands today.
Anjolie Ela Menon, Mallika Sarabhai & Radha Bajaj at the launch of Le Sutra
AR Rahman, Baz Luhrmann & Vincent Fantauzzo at the Le Sutra Gallery
Baz Luhrmann & Vincent Fantauzzo paint a mural on the hotel’s exterior wall
