Discovering your calling amid a successful career in fashion as an interior designer is just what happened to Purvi Padia, who established her studio, Purvi Padia Design, in New York City in 2008. But what is so advantageous to having a background in fashion, is that your aesthetic is honed and refined.
Padia’s portfolio is chock-full of neutral-toned luxe interiors that are not only luxurious, but livably comfortable. The lines and colors harken the work of historic legend, Jean Michel Frank, with a touch of mid-century modern and neutral-hued maximalism. Her sense of balance is so on-point that any of her designs would work in both traditional or contemporary architectural homes. Her family’s home in Bridgehampton is her “favorite place on earth.”
In 2012, her work received the Best of Remodeling Award from Houzz, an online platform for residential remodeling and design, chosen by the more than 1.2 million registered members of their avid community. Purvi Padia Design was also selected for the 2020 Best of Manhattan Award in the Interior Designer category by the Manhattan Award Program and is also an Honoree in Interior Design in Luxe Interiors + Design’s 2020 Gold List. Most recently, Padia designed a room she dubbed The Lioness for the Kaleidoscope Project at the historic bed and breakfast Cornell Inn located in Lenox, Massachusetts.
Beyond her amazing work, her passion for philanthropy also runs deep. Padia has sat on a number of non-profit boards including Girls Inc, UNICEF Next Generation, and UNICEF USA, to name a few. In 2018 Padia founded Project Lion, as a UNICEF initiative. The focus is to improve the lives of India’s 1.5 million orphaned children who live in impoverished conditions and endure lives deprived of basic human rights. Since the start of the program, Project Lion has reached more than 582,000 children. In addition, she collaborated with London Jewelers to create the Lioness collection which found an early celebrity following, and 100 percent of proceeds go to support UNICEF Project Lion.
We talked to Padia to learn more about her intense life of design and philanthropy and how she managed through the pandemic.