House of Experts Ep 31: Vibha Kagzi in conversation with Ami Kothari, Founder and Creative Director of Dining Couture

House of Experts is a show that ReachIvy kick-started to help those who are unclear about their career choices. We hope through these sessions with some very successful people, we can shed light on a new career path every week. House of Experts plans to make a collection of interactive and informative sessions with experts from various domains.
Vibha Kagzi, the host, is the Founder and CEO of ReachIvy.com, a premium study abroad and career consultancy organization. Vibha, a Harvard alumna, is a successful entrepreneur and believes in helping others chalk out their future careers.

In episode 31 of House of Experts, we were fortunate to host, Ami Kothari, founder and creative director of Dining Couture. Ami’s journey began as a table stylist and her forte lies in conducting table styling workshops. She has conducted over 220 workshops that have been well received around India and abroad. She was involved in styling India’s first e-cook book and has done styling assignments for magazines and websites. She has been featured in Good Homes, India Today, Mumbai Mirror, Vogue, Femina, and Indian Express to name a few.

Some excerpts from the interview:

1. Flashback to your childhood, how was life growing up?
So I spent most part of my childhood in Bombay, so I’ve grown up in Bombay, studied in Bombay, I lived in a joined family which definitely worked to my advantage because there was always so much to learn from everyone. Different generations have different things to offer and growing up both my grandmom’s were very creative in the kitchen, they were very good at stitching. You know, I’d come up with I want this fancy compass box and my grandmom would just remove some fabrics, open her sewing machine and make the pockets that I want and all. Also, planning on things that you want and getting it executed, I think it has played a role somewhere in my life. Even back then when mom and grandmom used to entertain at home, it wasn’t just getting dishes out, there was thought process going into it. My favorite among everything they made was, and this is back in the ’80s, they made this sandwich and then they made dough which is pink and green and tied a ribbon to make a bow. Even back then they we very creative so I have grown up seeing a lot of creativity. My dad has an eye for detail so just a combination of all of that, I think has nurtured me and made me the person I am today.

2. How did you get started, did you go to design school, did you get a degree in art, is there some sort of formative education that led to sprucing up your creative side?
So, no, I did my bachelors in social work, something absolutely not connected. From a very early age I knew I wanted to do something with education and kids, so I kind of geared my education towards that. Actually, for the first 10 years of my career, I was working with special needs children, I was teaching. So I haven’t been to a design school.

3. How did the transition happen for you?
So I was on a break from work and we actually entertain a lot at home so this came very naturally to me and also trying to use only what I have at home so it’s even if I have 3 -4 dinner sets at that time and we’d entertain 3-4 times a week, so you want to make your table look different each time, you want your guests to feel special every time, so I just kept innovating in my styles and my friends really appreciated that and actually they forced me to do my first workshop and that is honestly how I first started.

4. What’s the creative process of table styling?
First, you start with mats then your dinner plate and culinary, table cloth aren’t essential.
Whenever you designing for a client, make sure you jump into their shoes as each client is unique with a different perspective.
Remember, the basic foundation rules of table styling are Colours, heights, flowers, and lighting(candles). It also depends on the theme and occasion.

5. What are some of the traits that someone should have to be successful in this career?
Ofcourse a creative eye but apart from that, it requires a lot of planning, organizing, thinking out of the box. You might be in a situation where you have done/planned something and suddenly you don’t have one of the flowers available, or material available, it is really important for you to at that time come up with a good enough alternative, like I was working on a shoot for Good Homes magazine, this was a couple of years ago, actually one of the pictures made it to the cover page of the magazine but we had planned for a particular look and I just woke up in the morning and thought everything looks too similar, let’s go out of the box, so I get in touch with the team and tell them oh I want to paint some vegetables and put them across the table, I think it will look nice. They were kind enough to give me a free hand, so we used a runner and we painted pumpkins of different colors and the table turned out beautiful. Just because I was thinking everything was becoming floral and similar, I just thought this would be a good change and this worked out really different and nice. So, just to be able to think out of the box.

We are extremely grateful to Ami Kothari for sharing her journey and valuable learnings with us.

Missed out on the previous house of expert episodes? You can watch them here

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