Srimoyi Bhattacharya on authorship, aspiration and what it takes to build a brand language that feels unmistakably its own.

There is a particular kind of intelligence required to make a brand feel unmistakably itself.

For Srimoyi Bhattacharya, that work begins long before the press release, the campaign or the event. It begins with identifying what is worth saying in the first place. From her early years in Paris and a teenage internship in Yohji Yamamoto’s press office to a career spent shaping the way fashion and luxury brands communicate, she has approached storytelling not as decoration, but as structure.

Again and again, our conversation returns to the same idea: authorship. What belongs uniquely to a brand? What can it say that nobody else can credibly say? And how do you turn that distinction into a language that can evolve without becoming diluted?

It is a particularly relevant question at a time when brands are expected to constantly produce stories, content and cultural meaning. For Srimoyi, more communication is not necessarily better communication. What matters is whether the story could truly have come from anyone else.

Here, she speaks about building brands from the inside out, finding communication codes that belong to India, the changing nature of aspiration and why, whether she is looking at a room or a brand, she is always searching for what belongs.

How did you first find your way into PR and brand storytelling?

When I was still a teenager, I did my first internship in the press office of the legendary Japanese designer Yohji Yamamoto. It was completely eye-opening because, until then, I had no understanding of what happened behind the scenes of a fashion show or what public relations really meant.

I watched all these different worlds come together at once: the collection, the choreography, the guests, the press and the coverage. I saw how a creative vision was ultimately conveyed to the outside world. I found that orchestration fascinating. I think it was my first glimpse into the power of communication, and I knew it was something I wanted to explore further.

I also remember the first article I ever pitched coming out. Interestingly, the subject itself wasn’t particularly close to my heart, cable modems, if you please, but I remember the sheer joy of seeing something I had helped make happen become tangible.

More importantly, I began to understand the impact communication could have, not simply on visibility, but on the perception of a brand, its equity and, ultimately, its business. I loved the idea that I could play a role in enhancing somebody else’s product, idea or creative vision. That was probably my aha moment.

You sometimes describe yourself as an architect. How does that idea translate into the way you build a brand, and what are you looking for when you first encounter one?

Very humbly, I sometimes think of myself as an architect. My job is to help build strong foundations and good bones. Before you think about the frills and decoration, the events, the press, the collaborations, the visibility, you need a blueprint. You need to understand what you’re building, why you’re building it and what it should look and feel like over time.

So much of what I do today is about helping brands create that blueprint: identifying what is truly distinctive about them, deciding what needs amplification and building a robust plan around it. Like architecture, the structure needs to be strong enough to evolve, but flexible enough to leave room to grow.

What I look for is ownership, or authorship, the thing that belongs uniquely to that brand. It could be a point of view, a technique, a history, a founder’s personality, a cultural reference or even a way of doing business.

Very often, brands are so close to what they do that they don’t necessarily recognise what is most interesting about themselves. Before thinking about what we want to say, I want to understand what nobody else can credibly say. That’s usually where the story begins.

In a world where every brand is trying to “tell a story,” what separates meaningful storytelling from noise?

Authenticity, certainly, but originality too. The most meaningful stories are told in a voice that feels completely your own.

For me, the operative question is always: could anybody else own this story? If the answer is yes, perhaps we haven’t gone deep enough yet.

One of the wonderful things about working in India today is that there is still tremendous space for experimentation. We have extraordinary histories, crafts, cultural references and contemporary realities to draw from. The opportunity is not simply to tell more stories, but to find new ways of telling them, ways that could only have come from here and from that particular brand.

You grew up in Paris and worked across different fashion capitals before building your career in India. Has that global exposure made you more conscious of the need for Indian brands to develop communication codes of their own?

I’ve had the privilege of working across very strong fashion capitals, and each one taught me something about how differently people consume ideas, aesthetics and brands. Perhaps more importantly, that exposure gave me a certain boldness when I moved to India.

For instance, I set up a showroom space here at a time when that wasn’t necessarily the obvious way to approach fashion PR. I had seen how spaces could become communication tools elsewhere and wanted to interpret that idea for India, not replicate it. That distinction has stayed with me.

Global exposure is enormously valuable, but the interesting work begins when you stop importing formulas and start translating ideas through your own cultural context.

I think we’re still in the process of defining our own fashion communication codes. For a long time, we inherited certain formulas from Paris, London or New York: the seasonal collection announcement, the traditional launch, the established fashion calendar. But those formats don’t necessarily translate directly to India, nor should they.

Our consumer behaves differently, our relationship with fashion is different, and even the occasions we buy clothes for are different. Brands need to ask themselves what communication looks like specifically for their consumer in India rather than automatically following an international template.

And there isn’t one Indian fashion code either. The codes must evolve depending on what you’re selling, whom you’re speaking to and what relationship you want that consumer to have with you.

As the codes of luxury evolve, what does aspiration look like today, and where does emotional connection fit within it?

Emotional connection is enormously important when you’re in the business of desire rather than necessity. But I wouldn’t necessarily call emotional connection itself the new marker of luxury.

To me, luxury is still about aspiration, but the nature of aspiration has changed.

It isn’t simply about keeping people outside the door anymore. It’s about creating a world that people desire to enter.

The skill lies in communicating aspiration while allowing your consumer to feel emotionally part of that universe. That balance between desire, distance and belonging is what I find particularly interesting about luxury today.

Your Goa home is full of objects, periods and references that somehow sit comfortably together. Does the way you create a space reveal something about the way you approach brands?

I think it’s an occupational hazard that I can’t enter a room without somehow thinking about how it can come together! I find myself instinctively creating themes and connections between things.

At home, though, I try not to overthink it. I mix and match enormously: periods, objects, things I’ve collected, things I’ve inherited and things that simply make me smile. I suppose that reveals my experimental side as well.

My house is probably a little like my head, a very large flea market! There are lots of seemingly unrelated things in there, but somehow I know where everything belongs.

Goa also gives me quiet, even though my workdays here are intense, and, perhaps surprisingly, I find myself much more productive because of it. More than that, Goa gives me the space to have an identity that isn’t defined entirely by my work.

In cities, particularly when you’ve worked for a long time, it becomes very easy for your professional identity to precede you everywhere. Here, I’m reminded that there is also the life you choose to live. I like that balance. Work remains an enormous part of who I am, but it doesn’t have to be the whole story.

You’re wearing a piece from our Ikebana collection, which draws from Japanese minimalism. Minimalism may not be the first word one associates with your wonderfully layered aesthetic. Is there a place for restraint in the way you live or work?

I must be candid: this feels slightly like a trick question because there is very little that is minimalist about me! I chose this piece because I loved its geometry and the way three neutral colours came together so beautifully.

Perhaps that’s as close as I get to minimalism. I admire restraint enormously, even if I’m not always very good at practising it. And thank you for giving me such a wonderful opportunity to wear it.

What becomes clear over the course of a conversation with Srimoyi is that her instinct is not necessarily to simplify, but to clarify.

She is drawn to layers, whether in a home, a culture, a campaign or a brand. The work lies in understanding how those layers relate to one another, which ones deserve emphasis and which ones can be stripped away. It is perhaps why the idea of architecture suits her so well. The finished surface matters, but only because something considered sits beneath it.

There is also a pleasing contradiction in someone who describes her own head as “a very large flea market” being so precise about the need for authorship. But perhaps the two instincts are not contradictory at all. Srimoyi seems less interested in neatness than in coherence. Things need not match. They simply need a reason to belong together.

And perhaps the same is true of a brand.

At a time when it has never been easier to borrow an aesthetic, imitate a format or join a cultural conversation, distinctiveness increasingly comes from knowing what not to borrow. The strongest brands do not need to sound like everyone else. They need to understand themselves well enough to recognise what is already theirs.