Somewhere between handbags and homeware, tucked almost playfully into the margins of luxury maisons, is a category that feels indulgent and irresistible—games. At Hermes, backgammon arrives swathed in saddle leather and polished wood. Louis Vuitton transforms poker into a stylistic ritual—chips, cards, and dice tucked into monogram trunks. And Gucci leans all the way in: enamel-hued chess boards, animal motifs standing in for royalty. Even Baccarat reimagines chess in crystal—translucent, luminous, and unapologetically display-worthy.
Games, of course, have always held their place, but there’s a particular allure reserved for chess and carrom. Chess is all restraint and seduction. Carrom, by contrast, is immediate and kinetic. Now, both are being elevated. Studios like SHED are turning the carrom board into something far more layered—marble, stone, pigment. One of their boards is described as a “narrative terrain… a social node, an altar of stories”. And yet, it remains functional. “This material intervention invites players to slow down, to notice, to feel,” says Priyanka Shah of SHED. For makers like Parminder Singh of Indian Chess Company, heritage leads the way. “Since chess evolved from India’s chaturanga, that heritage naturally guides our design philosophy,” he says. So you have classic forms elevated through fine hand-carving, premium woods, and meticulous finishing.
At luxury store Swadesh in Mumbai, entire sections are devoted to old-world play: hand-carved wooden sets, lacquered pieces, cloth boards, puppets. Ganjifa cards, rich with Maharashtra’s artistic legacy, sit alongside reimagined decks from The India Craft Project, where each card becomes a miniature canvas. Even Dolce & Gabbana enters the mix—poker cards turned into objects of indulgence. And then there’s Mahjong. It has slipped seamlessly into India’s social circuits, with homegrown labels like Mojo Mahjong shaping its local expression. In this new world of luxury, leisure is play.