The sprawling room in a corner on the first floor of the building is aesthetic enough: scrolls from Hong Kong, a statue from Egypt, knick-knacks from Paris and St Petersburg in Russia, a huge Buddha idol and rows of magazines and catalogues stacked neatly on the floor. There’s a French window of sorts, which drenches the room with light and overlooks a manicured lawn. The other wall, behind the imposing desk, has a flaming orange jamevar shawl framed and mounted the other way round because the designer likes the soft richness of blurred corners.

“Everything starts here,” says Valaya, his face lit up by the pool of halogen warmth from his table lamp. “At the initial stage of any project, I think and work best alone. This is where all that happens,” he says. ‘All that’ includes the blueprint of the sketches and the collection details for each garment. It’s here that the designs are painstakingly drawn up before the field is thrown open to his team. “My studio is a world in itself. I have drawn it up in a way so that it has a work area and a semi-work area. I like huge open spaces because I believe in making my designs larger than life. I get withdrawal symptoms if I can’t make it to the studio even for a day,” he says.

Behind him, the table is lined with the pictures of his family—Valaya’s parents, his daughter and wife, who is expecting their second child, and other relics from the past. Family clearly plays a pivotal role in influencing his work. One wall is dedicated to sketches and scribbles by his daughter—a blue sun over a yellow landscape, topsy-turvy houses and flowers with strange blossoms. “When I look at her vision of life, I am amazed at how much potential it has. It’s very encouraging when I am sitting at the desk drawing up sketches,” he says.

Black-and-white photographs taken by Valaya adorn a wall. “I started photography much before fashion designing. I used to assist Rohit Khosla and while Prabuddha (Dasgupta) would conduct his fashion shoots, I would also click,” he reveals. The habit has stayed. Till date, he shoots his own campaigns.

On our way out, the sleek cutlery on the table catches our eye. “That’s just an experiment. If it works, we will come out with our own range of cutlery,” he says. Clearly, creativity has no limits here.