J J VALAYA
HONDA ACCORD

Fashion czar JJ Valaya has an unbridled passion for designing clothes, furnishings and tapestry. P Tharyan discovers another desire, hitherto unexploited, to fashion cars and bikes.

“ I’D LOVE TO REDESIGN CARS — THINGS LIKE EVEN SHIFTING THE POSITION OF THE STEERING WHEEL”

JJ Valaya could well have been the toast of Wall Street denizens when he uttered the words, “I’m a greedy guy” to me. It was almost like endorsing the philosophy of that one-time Wall Street financial bigwig Gordon Gecko. But then Gecko was outright greedy, and the man being interviewed is honestly expressing his deepest passion for cars.
If this immensely articulate Sikh has his way, he would love to possess a powerful four-wheel drive, a sports car, a shopping car and perhaps a Hummer thrown in for effect. “I’m greedy and would love to have a stable full of cars. . . it’s good to dream. My job is all about imagination,” he says without flinching.
It has been just a few months before he bought his new set of wheels, a Honda Accord automatic. “I would have gone for the Honda V6 if only I had known it was coming,” he rued. But then he is quick to regain his composure: “It’s the ease of driving for which I marvel at the Accord automatic. Driving this car is total pleasure. And when my driver takes over, I sit in front. . . just to get the feel.” I nod my head. Once a petrol-head, always a petrol-head!
Valaya also owns a Hyundai Sonata manual. Before that he had an Opel Astra, a Cielo and a Maruti 800. During his early days in Chandigarh, he was essentially a biker with a Yamaha RD350. “It was a souped-up bike with colourful claddings in front,” he recalled. All went well until he collided head-on into a Jeep that left him with a broken leg. When he moved on to Delhi’s National Institute of Fashion Technology, a second-hand Maruti 800 kept him company. Yes, he souped that up too. I couldn’t help wonder at this moment that India’s fashion guru, who is also the country’s official brand ambassador for Swarovski, has a major itch — he just cannot bear things the way they are and goes about embellishing them.
Delhi’s chaotic traffic gets on Valaya’s nerves. “Delhi-ites have a pathetic sense of driving. They keep shifting lanes, leading to total chaos on the roads,” he laments. But he hopes that with highways and improved roads coming up at a fast pace, motorists will begin driving in the correct lane. Valaya probably has his factory in mind when he talks about expressways. Located in Manesar, on the outskirts of Delhi, it will soon be connected to the capital by a fabulously-constructed eight-lane road. Then, I’m sure, there’ll be fewer chances of Valaya’s driver being behind the wheel of the Honda Accord automatic. Can fashion and automobiles co-exist? “DC (Dilip Chhabria) does a wonderful job. I want to go to him and say, ‘Hey let’s rip a car apart and do it up — and then co-brand it. Things like shifting the console, maybe even the position of the steering wheel’. There’s so much that can be done,” he says. The high priest of high fashion is equally emphatic about motorcycles. “I’m surprised Royal Enfield is not coming out with real cruisers. It will be interesting to work together on a limited-edition Enfield motorcycle,” he notes. I could imagine Valaya's suppressed desires to do up anything and everything around him. Call it greed or call it passion — it’s so typical of the turbaned couturier.