If you are instantly transported to a jungle where wild things await you, as you enter the heady, luxe Tipsy Tiger — the new concept bar and club in Sector V — then the interiors of the venue play an important role in imbibing that feeling. Spread across two levels and 5,500 sq ft, Tipsy Tiger is divided into multiple zones that allow guests to choose between private and cosy areas and a space where you can let your hair down as well. Designed by Rakhee Jain, it fuses her Kolkata-meets-London sensibilities to create the luxe den with an edgy mood board. Look around and you will see locally sourced elements such as railings from old north Kolkata houses, shola work and the quintessential Bengali chequered flooring. But Rakhee then went on to merge these with Roberto Cavalli wallpapers, quirky lamp-holders, a seating inside a makeshift cage, selfie-worthy washrooms and some state-of-the-art lighting (by Kunal Singh). Right design and a great F&B menu make what Tipsy Tiger strives to be — an exciting new party space. Rakhee tells us more about designing it:
Rakhee Jain
What was the brief for this place and what was your vision for it?
When we initially started, the brief was “Kuch rocking banna chahiye” and “aap London se hai na so London jaisa banna chahiye”. But the brief was also that it has to reflect something which was Kolkata but not Kolkata. The idea was that we wanted to make it a fun, chilled-out space, yet make it look very luxurious. The two are a hard thing to match because when it’s fun, you want it to be very quirky, and cool and young. And then luxurious means, you’re dealing with the
40-plus, because they understand the quality and marrying the two was like a bit of a task. And that’s why in my brief, I’ve written it had to be luxurious, yet fun, you know, traditional in a way, but very modern at the same time. So we were just trying to marry all these opposite concepts together to come up with something interesting.
I started with the concept of Sunderbans as I thought, ‘Why don’t we take something that is close to everybody’s heart and something people could relate too’. I came up with the idea because I had a different vision where I wanted to use a lot of plants. But eventually it changed because you know how the place evolves, we can’t use it. And there are a lot of other reasons too. So we said, ‘Okay, let’s stick to the Sunderban concept’. Let’s create the jungle for all the tigers who are going to come and crawl at night.
So if you see, we essentially do not have any tigers — the people who come here are essentially the tigers. And that is why we call them the ‘tipsy tigers’. We want them to get drunk, we want them to enjoy the alcohol and the beverage menu that we have because it’s absolutely fabulous. So that was the whole idea behind it. It’s starting from Sunderbans. And our main character was the Royal Bengal tiger, we talk about its power, the operation hours from dusk to dawn.
What are the major design elements of this space?
The space is 5,500sq ft in size and we’ve played on the jungle theme. So right as you enter, we use the jungle wallpaper on the ceiling, which you generally don’t see. And we are creating the ambience like you’re entering a jungle and we’ve used these butterfly lights. Then you enter into the monkey zone with the flora and the fauna and the arches of the Sunderbans so we’ve taken a lot of greens from there. The downstairs is mostly for private parties and you can even use it to sit down and have a drink in the evenings if you don’t want very loud music. There are elements like reclaimed railings from old north Kolkata homes. So if you see all the railings, they are different because we haven’t made them. We bought everything that was being sold as junk. So we’ve used junk to create something that we liked.
And we must talk about the black-and-white chequered flooring, which is a very colonial thing. To modernise it, we’ve used mirror strips. So we’ve used the mirror strips because according to Vastu — and the space is 100 per cent Vastu-compliant — it deletes bad energy and welcomes Lakshmi at the same time. The cage is to tame the “tipsy tiger”, so to say. So we’re using things that go with a tiger.
I see a lot of the juxtaposition of flora and fauna. How did you do that?
The idea was jungle theme where we have lots of different characters — male and female. The flamingo, to me, comes across as a very female character. And hence, we put them in the bathroom, because it’s pretty. Some of the elements were hand-painted and then digitised to print a wallpaper, and we have used the works of Bengali artisans as well. I think geometric forms like stripes and dots have a trippy effect. Combined with the lighting in the place, it has a very trippy effect. We have these laser beams that surround the chairs to make you feel like you are sitting inside a cage.
Tell me about the bar area…
For the bar area, we have used a Brazilian quartz which has this animal feel kind of paint on it to feel like tiger skin. And we use the Ferris wheel, reminiscent of the Bengali mela. Since that’s the cash counter, we wanted to use copper.
Tell me about the lights…
There are suspended ceiling monkey lamps that are by Seletti. The lighting of the space has been designed by Kunal who’s the light consultant. I would literally tell him, I want my pillar to be lit up or I want something to look like rays and he came up with the design. Because there was a pillar in the middle of the room, he designed it like a tree with lights. The lights all get synchronised so all the lights that run around the nightclub can change colours and things like that. We have these laser beams that are like crazy lasers.
The washrooms, too, look stunning…
We have a lobby, where we can hang out and wait. This is like a place for people to socialise, if they want to talk. And the other thing is that the toilets are like a little selfie zone. Everything is sourced locally, except for some of the wallpapers by Roberto Cavalli, because they basically specialise in animal print and we have used their fabric as well (for upholstery in some places).
How do you introduce your personal exposure or personal signature styles to your projects?
The two cities that have really influenced me in my life are Kolkata and London. Kolkata is where I’ve grown up and London is where I’ve lived. And for me, I wanted to reflect it through my design. Since we were doing this in Kolkata, and it has a British past, we wanted to marry the two and hence, you will see a lot of British moldings, you will see those colonial elements infused with Bengali elements. And I wanted to marry the two. So for me, it was like a perfect identity here to have a bit of London, a bit of Kolkata existing in the same place. And that only defines me as a person as well as. I would like to bring the exposure of the West but the warmth and hospitality of the east.
