MUMBAI – as Bombay is now known – may not be the fist place that comes to mind when planning a shopping spree in search of homeware. But for about £1,000 (which includes return air fare, a Sheraton hotel room and a day with spent with a car a driver and a personal shopper), you can take a long weekend in the Indian business capital and come home laden with home goodies. Traveltakes about the same time as flying to New York.

Over the phone, Tanya at specialist firm reaves Tours sings the praises of Mumbaibased über-shopper, Monica Vazirelli. Vazirelli is a former interior designer with a packed contacts book and can, apparently snap her fingers and get things made, copied and shipped in an instant. She can find antiques in back alleys for next o nothing, and unearth silverware and raw-silk upholstered sofas.

Vazirelli is, by al accounts, the Trinny and Susannah of the sub-continental decorating world.

Mumbai is city throbbing with energy and is not an easy place to master. Britons find it almost impossible to buy prperty there and residential rentals can be sky-high. But shopping in the city – whichstarts with a Sheraton curry breakfast and an Ayurvedic massage in the fivestar hotel’s spa – ws never such fun in London.

I meet Vazirelli at 11.30am, the recognised start of any Mumbai shopping day. Resplendent in orange nd pink with long silver hair and gold sandals, she quickly plans my itinerary. I want bepoke leather ottomans (I’ve spent a year failing to find them in a particular size in London), three rough-silk blinds for our bay window, cushions with chain stitch, and Š well, I’m still waving my list as we drive off.

Vazirelli soon proves worth her weight in god (or indeed silver, if we’re talking about handmade, beaten, silverclad funiture). I could never have found these places on my own.

We are chuffeured from Phillips (perfect for kitsch iconography and Victoriana) to Moorthy’s Antiques Warehouse – just down that alleyway, past the banyan trees and tucked under an overhanging corrugated rof – for colonial furniture, spiral staircases and Kerala carved columns.

At Bharat Funishings I buy “antique rose” cotton damask (£8 a metre); in Kala Niketan, amid sais and bangles, we choose exquisite raw silk (£3 a metre). D Popli offers a mine f jewellery and great silver boxes, frames and candlesticks – at tin prices – and, at Pllate, there are acres of Asian contemporary design on display and, oh, such cushions hen there are the leather hides in the Muslim quarter, and the master tailor, Kishor, at Choice, wo makes my silk into beautiful blinds in four days (less than £250 for three blinds, incuding the fabric).

Vazirelli makes this so easy because, unlike me, she speaks Hindi, knows where places are (unlike the tai drivers), isn’t on commission, gets fair prices, stops me dithering, saves me from myworst style mistakes and even helps me cross the roads (a feat in itself). She also getsitems loaned (on approval) and persuades me to pay for items that will be delivered lter. Ah, such trust.

For lunch she takes me to the (members only) Willingdon Club, wher ladies play bridge and gentlemen ring bells for the waiters’ attention. In the evenig we attend a contemporary Indian art auction at the Taj hotel, where shouting “lakh” is a pice in millions and not a comment on the art.

On the way back, we must make our way in thedart through a 3,000-strong wedding party; there are fireworks, tambourines and raucus street vendors: Peter Jones this ain’t.

Cameras flash and the fashion world applauds while eating cheese straws and drinking Lanson champagne. These are the British Fashion Awards – the Oscars of the designer rag trade.

It is all taking place in the tented world of the Duke of York’s barracks. The audience wears black and glitter and off-the-shoulder creations and looks as if it could swap places with the catwalk folk. And then there are the proper models, the 34-22-34 ones who say they won’t get out of bed for less than $10,000 and earn up to £1,000 a minute, eclipsing their designer bosses. Naomi Campbell, Helena Christiansen, Tatjana Patiz and Linda Evangelista to be precise. This evening they appear swan-like, sometimes carrying poodles. Without them, any show would lack lustre.

At 10.30 the master of ceremonies announces: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, please stand.’ Is this for Naomi, the woman they say expects to be treated like royalty? No . . . it’s Princess Michael of Kent, wearing a glamorous nun’s habit of non-English design.

Vivienne Westwood has won the British Designer of the Year title for the second year running. ‘I want to say thank you to these models, who are worth every penny,’ she says.

The women with pouting lips are seated. Their fees have quadrupled in as many years and they expect to be flown first-class while sales of clothes are falling in these recession-hit times.

Is it true models don’t speak, have no way of projecting their personalities and push lettuce leaves around their plates? And will Helena Christiansen demand a smorgasbord?

A cassoulet of wild mushrooms and asparagus appears. Linda Evangelista, with pimento hair, lights up a Marlboro. And the divine Vivienne Westwood, in a dress printed with Fragonard cherubs, tells me the girls are super. ‘Naomi is charming,’ she says. ‘They’re all professionals, always on time, not prima donnas. They’ve got a marvellous theatrical sense. It costs £5,000 to advertise in a glossy magazine, but with a show you get all this free publicity. When I saw Linda wearing my pink, my heart was beating. To see your clothes on this dream, this dishiest of dishes . . . but if I saw any of them in jeans, I wouldn’t think them that great.’

Princess Michael holds court, later on little clusters of beau monde gather around her. Many of the models weren’t keen on meeting the Royal. ‘Just not interested. They wanted to go back to their hotel,’ said one of their entourage.

Boy George whirls around. His comment? ‘Beauty fades, but talent lives on.’

I meet a supermodel in a Rifat dress. Naomi Campbell, serene and incandescently beautiful, is enjoying a successful evening and a cigarette. Nearby Linda Evangelista looks bored. She smokes cigarettes. When you look like that, you don’t have to do anything. She thaws. ‘I came as a favour for British Vogue and to support British designers. My services were free,’ she tells me. ‘”And what is she wearing? She gives the frostiest of frosty looks. ‘Armani’.

It’s 12.30. People are starting to leave. — And, suddenly, the supermodels have gone. Do they need beauty sleep?