MUMBAI – as Bombay is now known – may not be the fist place that comes to mind when planning a shopping spree in search of homeware. But for about £1,000 (which includes return air fare, a Sheraton hotel room and a day with spent with a car a driver and a personal shopper), you can take a long weekend in the Indian business capital and come home laden with home goodies. Traveltakes about the same time as flying to New York.

Over the phone, Tanya at specialist firm reaves Tours sings the praises of Mumbaibased über-shopper, Monica Vazirelli. Vazirelli is a former interior designer with a packed contacts book and can, apparently snap her fingers and get things made, copied and shipped in an instant. She can find antiques in back alleys for next o nothing, and unearth silverware and raw-silk upholstered sofas.

Vazirelli is, by al accounts, the Trinny and Susannah of the sub-continental decorating world.

Mumbai is city throbbing with energy and is not an easy place to master. Britons find it almost impossible to buy prperty there and residential rentals can be sky-high. But shopping in the city – whichstarts with a Sheraton curry breakfast and an Ayurvedic massage in the fivestar hotel’s spa – ws never such fun in London.

I meet Vazirelli at 11.30am, the recognised start of any Mumbai shopping day. Resplendent in orange nd pink with long silver hair and gold sandals, she quickly plans my itinerary. I want bepoke leather ottomans (I’ve spent a year failing to find them in a particular size in London), three rough-silk blinds for our bay window, cushions with chain stitch, and Š well, I’m still waving my list as we drive off.

Vazirelli soon proves worth her weight in god (or indeed silver, if we’re talking about handmade, beaten, silverclad funiture). I could never have found these places on my own.

We are chuffeured from Phillips (perfect for kitsch iconography and Victoriana) to Moorthy’s Antiques Warehouse – just down that alleyway, past the banyan trees and tucked under an overhanging corrugated rof – for colonial furniture, spiral staircases and Kerala carved columns.

At Bharat Funishings I buy “antique rose” cotton damask (£8 a metre); in Kala Niketan, amid sais and bangles, we choose exquisite raw silk (£3 a metre). D Popli offers a mine f jewellery and great silver boxes, frames and candlesticks – at tin prices – and, at Pllate, there are acres of Asian contemporary design on display and, oh, such cushions hen there are the leather hides in the Muslim quarter, and the master tailor, Kishor, at Choice, wo makes my silk into beautiful blinds in four days (less than £250 for three blinds, incuding the fabric).

Vazirelli makes this so easy because, unlike me, she speaks Hindi, knows where places are (unlike the tai drivers), isn’t on commission, gets fair prices, stops me dithering, saves me from myworst style mistakes and even helps me cross the roads (a feat in itself). She also getsitems loaned (on approval) and persuades me to pay for items that will be delivered lter. Ah, such trust.

For lunch she takes me to the (members only) Willingdon Club, wher ladies play bridge and gentlemen ring bells for the waiters’ attention. In the evenig we attend a contemporary Indian art auction at the Taj hotel, where shouting “lakh” is a pice in millions and not a comment on the art.

On the way back, we must make our way in thedart through a 3,000-strong wedding party; there are fireworks, tambourines and raucus street vendors: Peter Jones this ain’t.

SHE will fire your cook in Portuguese and arrange for your shoes to be put into boxes with Polaroid shots of them on the outside; help you buy, decorate and let your houses; try to get your daughter into Francis Holland, organise dinner for three or 300, personally scrutinise your Bahamas holiday home or fly masseurs to meet you in Cannes and return in your private jet.

Meet Lady Cosima Somerset – Cozzy to her buddies and clients – director of Concierge London. She has blonde hair (colour by Sejours, cut by Robert Casson) and is wearing natural makeup (“Trish McEvoy, at Harvey Nichols, is the best – I always go there before a party,” says Cosima) and sexy Jimmy Choo boots with Agnes B clothes.

Aged 43, she has a great body, (“Tim Bean, who charges £5,000 for a 12-week programme, changes your shape,”) and may have sought the services of Dr Elizabeth Dancey (“Britain’s leading dermatologist – amazing skin prick nutrition treatments”) and Yannis Alexandrides (“tops for laser treatments for the skin and botox”). She is also sweet, professional and funny.

Her clients range from her aunt, Lady Annabel Goldsmith, to Jemima Khan, Tara Palmer-Tomkinson, Mark Birley and Tamara Mellon. Let’s have some gossip, then. “No way!” But she knows everybody, doesn’t she? “No,” laughs Cosima, daughter of the Marquess of Londonderry and former wife of Cosmo Fry and Lord John Somerset. “But I certainly intend to.”

Concierge London membership costs £4,000 plus VAT a year. For this, clients get two free requests (up to an hour’s work) a month. “We’ll research a hotel in Barbados or buy something for you.”

Services thereafter cost £30 an hour, charged in quarter-hour slots – so, booking a restaurant costs £7.50.

Relocating people and organising parties is their forte; the most frequent request is for hiring and firing, though catering is high on the list – “We use Organic Express. The food is superb.”

Concierge London was started in 1999.

Clients live mostly in Belgravia, Hampstead, Chelsea and Kensington. “They want help managing their houses,” says Cosima, a former television researcher and mother of two. She likes long-term relationships. “The more we know clients, the better the service works.”

She says the secret of her success is simple. “It’s the scope and quality of our service, attention to detail and absolute discretion. And understanding our discerning members’ needs.” Add to that the ability to deal with bizarre requests.

“I’m always flying facialists to Paris and jetting off across the world to view houses. It no longer seems unusual.” She claims to always succeed. “Even if things sometimes take a while.” She pauses.

“But rich people always want everything done by tomorrow, at the latest.”

Concierge London, Studio D3, The Depot, 2 Michael Road, SW6 (020 7736 2244; www.conciergelondon.co.uk).

INSIDER KNOWLEDGE: COZZY’S CONTACTS

Maria Clancy: Organic Express – Caterers Who Care (020 7277 6147; email maria organic-express.com).
Tim Bean: personal trainer at the Insitute of Physique Management (07947 329696).
Dr Elizabeth Dancey: dermatological treatments (020 7821 8257).
Yannis Alexandrides: for skin treatments (020 7486 8055).
Hairdressers Karl and Luke: the former for colour and the latter for styling, at Sejours, 3 Bray Place, SW3 (020 7589 1100).
Robert Casson: hairdresser who makes house calls (07956 810265).

IF YOU haven’t yet heard of Katharine Pooley, you soon will. Pooley, erstwhile banker, adventurer and author of an unusual cookbook-cum-travelogue, A Taste of My World, is launching her eponymous Knightsbridge shop.

Dedicated to luxurious living and interiors, it will sell furnishings from Vietnamese tableware to Japanese antique kimono cushions and offers an upmarket interior design service.

“You’ll be able to buy everything you see here,” says thirtysomething Pooley, sitting in her stylish home with its fusion of East and West, contemporary and traditional. “I’m opening the shop because people keep asking where I get these beautiful things.”

So where does she get them? A mixture of everywhere, from the Parisian Marche aux Puces (for Louis XIV) to Bangkok market (gilt Buddhas and suchlike) and Burmese shops (good for Cambodian nick-nacks).

Not to mention the other places she comes across when dog-sledding in Alaska, horseback trekking in Ecuador or visiting Cambodian orphans: this is a woman who flies helicopters, shoots, cooks professionally and intends to climb Mount Everest.

In a cream Ralph Lauren wool skirt, matching sleeveless cashmere jumper, large solitaire diamond and strappy snakeskin shoes, Pooley’s sartorial style matches the décor in her Belgravia home. It is tranquil, fresh, clean and sophisticated, with buttermilk paint, taupe suede curtains, atmospheric John Cullen Design lighting, old limestone and wood floors and almond carpet throughout. Plus lots of Eastern artefacts.

When Pooley and her investment banker husband, Rob, saw the Belgravia house, they instantly fell for it. It was made up of three early-Victorian mews houses that had been knocked into one and entered through a secluded courtyard. “We loved it because it was on two floors,” explains Pooley. “We only saw one other house before buying it.” That was three years ago, when the couple – who also own a Colorado ski lodge, Phuket villa and a Scottish castle – were living in their house in Singapore.

When they bought the property, two men had lived there. “It had just two bedrooms and one bathroom.

Their bedrooms ran the length of the (4,200sq ft) house.”

Pooley’s business partner, Kerry Stone, helped to transform the house into a five-bedroom home with ample entertaining space. “We rewired, knocked through three rooms to make a family room, put three French windows in the drawing room, extended to build a study, made two more bathrooms and a laundry room and drying room.”

THE renovation work took 18 months and the couple moved in, with their four dogs, only two months ago.

No children? “We’re practising making them,” laughs Pooley, who married in 2002.

The drawing room reveals an eclectic mix of first-edition books, 17th-century hats, comfy sofas, zebraskin coffee table, Eastern antiquities, modern Asian sculptures, a massive, contemporary Chinese painting of Communist Party members by Yin Xin and a grand piano. “Mozart played on it. I took piano lessons so that I could surprise my husband on his 40th birthday,” giggles Pooley. “But everyone begged me to stop playing.”

There are silver-framed photos on top of the piano: “That’s the lady who introduced me to my husband on a blind date,” she says, pointing.

“That’s my grandfather. He invented the epidural.”

The drawing room is big enough to incorporate most of the members of the Royal Geographic Society. “I’m hoping to host a party for them,” she says, excitedly. “There’ll be a chocolate fountain, lectures and lots of explorers.” And a £25,000 homecinema installed by then.

Next door, the £75,000 Smallbone family room has a central island and work surfaces covered in unfinished, textured granite, a bespoke Ralph Lauren chest as a coffee table, Sub-Zero and Gaggenau appliances and limitededition photographs of Edmund Hillary’s Everest expedition. It leads onto a formal dining room containing a mixture of Asian antiquities and English 18th century furniture: a Chippendale dining table sits alongside a Burmese chest and six Burmese Mantra statues and English antique dining chairs are stacked with Eastern cushions.

The eclectic mix is repeated upstairs. In their bedroom are antique Asian bedside tables and bench, Vietnamese art, their wedding music framed on the wall, a Louis Vuitton trunk and an antique Scottish voting box.

The D C Dot Company bathroom has black slate walls, walnut cabinets and a limestone floor fringed with beach stones. “Rob wanted dark surfaces for masculinity. I wanted light for femininity.” It boasts a wet-room with overhead shower and vertical water jets, and a Victorian roll-top bath. “Another compromise,” laughs Pooley, who hails from Scotland. “I wanted a bath. But Rob is American.”

The meeting of cultures, styles and interests is everywhere. There’s the planned-for children’s bedroom, with a Chinese opium bed and rare Emperor’s crib; a guestroom with antique European sleigh bed and an attic housing mountaineering and golfing equipment.

And in the courtyard? Well, there’s an old French fountain to aid thirsty dogs and for feng shui, an English stone bench and a red Hong Kong rickshaw. “I spent 15 years in the East,” explains Pooley. “I keep thinking I’m just on holiday here.”

Katharine Pooley, 160 Walton Street, SW3 (020 7584 3223; enquiries katharinepooley.com; www.katharinepooley.com)

Where Katharine Pooley shops

FOR MY LONDON HOME Lighting: Sally Storey at John Cullen Lighting (020 7371 5400) English 18th century antiques: Ronald Phillips (020 7493 2341; email ronaldphillipsltd.co.uk) Carpet: Ulster Carpets (0808 100 0979; www.ulstercarpets.com) Floors: Drummond’s Architectural Antiques (020 7376 4499; www.drummonds-arch.co.uk) Beds: Sophisto-Cat Furniture (020 7731 2221) Kitchen: Smallbone of Devizes (020 7581 9989; www.smallbone.co.uk)

EUROPE

In Paris, I love the antiques square Le Louvre des Antiquaires in Place du Palais Royal (0033 142 975 5212), especially Galerie Heritages, which sells the best range of antique clubstyle chairs. In London, I love Soo San, 598a King’s Road (020 7731 2063), which has a superb collection of antique Chinese furniture and art.

WORLDWIDE

Lotus: Singapore and Thailand (www.lotusartsdevivre.com).

Exquisite accessories and gifts.

Soul of Asia: Phuket (0066 7621 1122; email: info@soulofasia.com web; www.soulofasiathailandartgallery.com). Wonderful Asian art and antiques.

Pagoda House: Singapore (0065 732 2177; www.pagodahouse.com). Marvellous collection of art de vivre and antiques focusing on the south of Asia, Indonesia, Burma and Cambodia.

SETTING up an interview with fashion designers Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana is a nightmare. Until the last minute, the appointment time is changed and the venue is undecided. Then they offer half an interview – Stefano will talk, Domenico won’t. Then they relent. Next they refuse to have their photographs taken. I arrive in Milan to discover the couple don’t speak English. But, of course, I did forget to ask.

In the event, Stefano turns up and Domenico appears half an hour late. Stefano, 33, is impossibly good looking and charming and Domenico, 36, is all in black. Carla Buzzi, their PR lady with raven hair, black leggings and coal Dolce & Gabbana tent top, translates. This hinders spontaneity. ‘Are you lovers as well as business partners?’ I ask. Solo blah blah amore blah blah. ‘Ha ha ha,’ shrieks Carla. Natter, natter, natter in Italian. ‘Yes,’ comes the cursory reply.

They dress Madonna (‘a friend’), Sting, David Bowie, Mick Jagger, Isabella Rossellini (‘a very good friend’), Julia Roberts, Kate Moss (‘not a good friend’ – but they discovered her), Kim Basinger and Brooke Shields. In 1991 Dolce & Gabbana – as they are known in labelspeak – were dubbed Italy’s hottest fashion property. ‘After four years nothing can be hot any more unless you use microwave,’ says Stefano.

Their 1994 worldwide turnover was £66 million, an increase of 81 per cent over the previous year. ‘British sales, buonissima,’ says Stefano. (They love British fashion. What the young do here gets taken up in New York and Milan, they say.) Now, 13 years after starting, they’re manufacturing accessories, perfume and furnishings too. Where do they stand beside Armani, Versace and Valentino? ‘We’re just chickens,’ says Domenico. ‘Like their nephews,’ adds Stefano.

Today they open their first British store, in Sloane Street. Armed with high heels, wielding long patent boots and brandishing studded belts, Stefano and Domenico will fight in the front line of the Bond Street versus Sloane Street battle – a fight highlighted by fashion oracle Suzy Menkes in the International Herald Tribune this week.

Army headquarters is three floors of decorated sandstone, opaquely stuccoed terra rossa and pastel ochre walls, and launch party soldiers from George Michael, Naomi Campbell and the Le Bons to Amanda de Cadenet. IT COMES as no surprise that the maverick duo has chosen to open in Sloane Street, just a few red patent heeled steps from Prada, natch. ‘Bond Street is too status for us,’ explains Domenico. It’s what this month’s Vogue dubs the New Snobbery. Old Snobs cling to their vulgar chain link handbags; New Snobs, identified only by the cognoscenti, swing plastic Prada ones discreetly. The point is that New Snobs spurn obvious displays of status. We meet in their private clients’ showroom, the day after Gucci scion Maurizio was shot on the streets of Milan. ‘Mamma mia,’ says Stefano. ‘All the fashion world is really shocked. We didn’t know him personally. He was not a social person, he was very intimate.’

On the wall is an imposing antique gilt frame containing a bra. The bra, Stefano has said, is like a jewellery box, protecting the most precious part of a woman. ‘We love the most feminine attributes of the women, like their breasts. The symbol of maternity and eroticism. Maybe because in our dreams we would like to be like them,’ he says now.

Dolce & Gabbana have changed the look of (biscuit-suited) Italian fashion with their ironic clothes, which draw inspiration from bordellos and pornography. Domenico says they’re not preoccupied with sex. ‘It’s an important part of life and has to be evaluated seriously.’

Stefano denies they peddle chic pornography. ‘I never show anything. You will never see a woman without a bra or slip. I want to show but not see.’ Their autumn collection has women in men’s tailoring and men who have plundered the wardrobes of Garcia Lorca and Salvador Dali. (‘In this moment being trendy is not trendy. We have gone outside fashion’ – Stefano, Milan, 1995.) But their trademark is underwear as outerwear.

For autumn they’ve also shown bustiers and corsets underneath erotic little black see-through dresses worn by riding-crop wielding models in long black boots. ‘We’re talking about rich women who have very little to do and have an attitude that is a bit sodomising,’ explains Carla, for Stefano. Sodomising? ‘No, sadistic, but in a very chic way.’

This brings us to Madonna. She rejected Jean-Paul Gaultier, designer of the famous conical bra, in favour of Dolce & Gabbana to design the costumes for her Girlie tour. Shortly after they were reported as saying they had not seen her show and had not been paid.

‘The Washington Post said we were angry Madonna didn’t pay her invoices,’ says Stefano. ‘But the clothes were a present we gave her. We never asked for money.’

What about the material girl? What stories do they have to tell? Dramatic pause. ‘She likes cinnamon sticks and liquorice,’ replies Stefano. It’s hard to tell if he’s being ironic.

And what of Brooke Shields? Isabella Rossellini? Kate Moss? ‘The funniest thing is that these women all fit into the same dress,’ confides Domenico. ‘It’s a miracle.’