Monica Shah's House of JADE at Ballard Estate blends Indian craft with couture, art, and home design. The 20,000 sq ft concept store celebrates Mumbai's heritage, featuring handmade tiles, frescoes, and commissioned artworks. Each floor offers unique experiences, from bridal couture to home decor, culminating in a rooftop view of the South Bombay skyline.
Monica Shah and Karishma Swali founded JADE by Monica and Karishma in 2008, and the label grew out of Chanakya International. Eighteen years later, Shah has moved it from Peddar Road to Ballard Estate, the Fort precinct that the Bombay Port Trust reclaimed between 1914 and 1918. House of JADE sits in Botawala Chambers on Mint Road. It covers 20,000 sq ft across four floors and a rooftop, with couture, art, a café, a home line and a bookstore under one roof.
Shah began her career in interiors, which she says shaped how she approached the building. “I started as an interior designer,” she says, adding that she worked in furniture design for a long time before fashion. “So for me, it’s kind of a full circle.” She says she wants to show that “I can express craft and bring craft into everyday life”, in clothes, in the home and in art. Ballard Estate is also personal. She grew up in Mumbai and kept returning to its galleries, museums, cafés and architecture.
The experience begins at the threshold. Handmade burgundy tiles line the façade, and a sculptural brick composition frames the elevator. Inside, a hand-painted fresco inspired by Shah’s memories of Bombay has been washed back on purpose, so it looks timeworn. The ground floor is called Palimpsest, after a surface where new writing sits over earlier writing. Shah says that is how she approached the building. She added a layer to its past, and “that’s why we kept that little piece alive”, she says of Smoker’s Corner. White marble plinths carry the artworks against the faded fresco.
Four commissioned Kuldevi works in Batik, Mata Ni Pachedi, Kalamkari and Bandhani sit here, along with a commissioned Pastel Ikat. Each shows how one subject takes a different visual form in each maker’s hands. Two permanent works made in the JADE atelier, The City That Raised Her and Bombay, In Many Faces, pay homage to the city. Shah began many of these pieces in the villages, spending time with the artists. New works will arrive every quarter.
The first floor, Celebrate, holds the bridal universe. It has couture for women and men, a Saree Salon, the Lion Chamber and Bespoke by appointment. A Kalamkari piece made with artists in Andhra Pradesh is an ode to Bombay. The second floor, Express, houses the 400 001 Bombay Edit, named after the city’s first PIN code. For the opening it also carries an archive of milestone collections from 2008 to 2026, reinterpreted for today. Contrast is the idea behind the floor. “I’m used to seeing contrast in Bombay, right? There will be a beautiful tea stall and there will be a high-rise next to it,” says Shah. “And that contrast is something that I wanted to express.”
The third floor, Belong, has JADE Café and JADE Home. The home line goes back to Shah’s earliest work as a furniture designer, with handmade ceramics, Kansa, silverware and sculptural objects. It is her personal favourite. JADE × CMYK from the house of ROLI is the bookstore, and a Gifting Concierge completes the floor. The rooftop, The Bombay Terrace, looks over the South Bombay skyline towards the sea.
Bombay also decided what stayed. The building once housed Smoker’s Corner, the secondhand bookstore in Botawala Chambers, and Shah chose not to erase it. “That’s why we kept that little piece alive,” she says.