If she’d wanted, she could have easily sat pretty at home as a certain Mrs Roshan and basked in the glory of her celebrity husband and one of Bollywood’s superstars. But Sussanne Khan Roshan, B-town heartthrob Hrithik Roshan’s better half was an established name in interior design even before she got married. Being just a WAG, she says, is rather demeaning than having the credentials of a woman of substance. Armed with an associate degree in interior decor from the reputed Brooks College (Long Beach), California, Sussanne’s first inspiration was her interior designer mother, Zarine Khan. “Watching her lend shape, size and design to various spaces at her creative best for a discerning clientele, gave me the initial push to discover my true calling,” she says.
Co-founder of The Charcoal Project, her store in Mumbai, Sussanne jointly runs the sleek furnishings emporium with her high-profile partners, Abu Jani, Sandeep Khosla and Andrew Martin. She was crowned ‘Creative Entrepreneur of the Year’ (2012) by leading high-street style magazine, Hello!
With 15 years’ experience in the field and a coveted consumer base spread worldwide, Sussanne learnt that the key to successful design is all in the mind not set by a standard rulebook. “Neither the prescribed yardsticks in bold texts nor a mixed palette of textures and materials can make a difference to a particular wall or a floor. It’s only one’s imagination that does the trick. To woo your customers’ eyes with an eye-catching product or make your label more appealing in the designing circuit, your signature trait should be your foremost USP,” she says.
But doesn’t her profession primarily cater to the elite? “We are vying to expand that pie on a broader spectrum,” she says, to be able to offer options to every single home through their quality designs. And I don’t mean this for cities alone. It holds true for district-towns as well. I hope our designs will fit into all pockets, blurring the budgetary constraints. So the sky is the limit for us,” she says. Her dream project is also to float a boutique hotel some day, something that she agrees is a long way off.
On the home front, what keeps her going round the clock? “It’s kids and the comfort zone. The bonding that we share as a family together is like a booster pill for me,” she adds.
With an Adonis-like husband by her side, does she always get told she is the luckiest woman on earth? “That’s for his female fans to decide. But I am still enjoying our romantic honeymooning phase. Marriage should never get stale, but must mature with age,” she quips with a giggle.