Bridge For Design November Issue 2015 November 2015 | Page 103

I

ndia is not exactly a hotbed for second-home real
estate among Westerners, unless perhaps you’re an
eclectic, creative type with a nomadic mentality and
an innate sense of adventure - a description that
fits London-based fashion designer Liza Bruce and
her husband, Nicholas Alvis Vega, a painter and jewellery
designer, to a T. Five years ago, a vacation in Jaipur led to
the rental of a spacious two-bedroom apartment in a former
palazzo. It’s where the couple are spending more and more
time these days - month-long stints six times a year. “Things
are just so intense here,” says Bruce. “The light is very
bright. It illuminates everything. It’s a big difference from
the grey light of London or New York.”
The pair, who met as teenagers in London and have been
on the move ever since, have lived a more global life than
most. Bruce was born in New York and raised in Britain
and Mexico. Her native-English husband was brought up in
Kenya, where his father was an architect. “Nicholas is used
to living in big-country landscapes,” she says. “He likes a lot
of space, and he certainly likes the heat.”
They discovered the apartment - once the men’s quarters
of an 1880 mansion by Sir Samuel Swinton Jacob, a British
architect who was the chief engineer for Jaipur - at a time
when old buildings were under assault. “A lot of Indians
want to live in new buildings, and they don’t have a great
understanding of renovation,” says Bruce. “They will paint
over original woodwork and put in all sorts of electric
gadgetry. We got here just in time.”
Under Bruce’s and Alvis Vega’s creative eye, the apartment
is now a visual kaleidoscope - so exuberant that it seems
children had been put in charge of the decoration. Each
room is painted a different bold colour (hot pink, bright

LEFT: Bruce and Alvis Vega designed the living room’s ceiling lights from
mercury-glass drops found in Firozabad; the sequined mattresses are
topped with cushions covered in Art Deco-era saris, and the Jal-style table
and daybed were made by local craftsmen
TOP: Liza Bruce, wearing a caftan of her own design, and her husband,
Nicholas Alvis Vega, at their Jaipur apartment, part of an 1880 mansion by
British architect Sir Samuel Swinton Jacob
Bridge for Design November 2015 103