The 21-year-old HH Maharaja Sawai Padmanabh Singh, known unofficially as the king of Jaipur, waltzed into the public eye in November 2017, when he escorted Reese Witherspoon’s daughter, Ava Phillippe, to the exclusive Bal des Débutantes in Paris.
Pictures of a tuxedo-clad Singh dancing with Phillippe, who was wearing a gold-flecked haute couture ball gown by Giambattista Valli, to the music from the film La La Land were circulated widely online.
Dolce & Gabbana took note, casting him in its Spring/Summer catwalk show the following June, which Singh says was his first real introduction to fashion.
Singh has been courting headlines ever since, thanks both to his prowess at polo — he is the youngest Indian player to compete in a World Cup match — but also because of his personal style.
His harmonious mix of western-style tailoring — crisp shirts, Thom Browne-style cropped trousers, well-cut suits — and traditional Indian garments such as the bandhgala (a high-collared short jacket) have made him into a style ambassador for modern India.
“[He] knows how to combine western and Indian references marvellously and has the inherent sense to wear the right thing at the right moment,” says Jean-Guilhem Lamberti, chief creative officer of French hotel group Accor, who worked with Singh on a forthcoming hotel campaign.
Giorgio Armani’s niece Roberta, who befriended him not long after his Dolce & Gabbana debut, describes Singh as “an exemplary role model for modern India, not solely in style but more in his grace and manners”.
Added to this is the lustre of his lineage. Singh is a descendant of the Jaipur royal family, and was “crowned” after his maternal grandfather passed away in 2011, when Singh was just 12. His forefather, Maharaja Jai Singh II, established Jaipur in 1727, a city in north-west India known for its imperial palaces and heritage architecture.
Although royal titles were abolished in India in 1971, the family is still revered by the people of the desert state of Rajasthan, of which Jaipur is the capital. When Singh walks into a room, our 35-year-old photographer’s assistant, who grew up in Jaipur, folds his hands and bows. To an outsider, the respect and allegiance are surprising, as nowhere else in India is royalty as important as it is here.
We meet at Singh’s residence, Sukh Niwas, on the first floor of the City Palace in Jaipur, which serves as both his family home and a museum. On the ground floor and the floors above, a steady stream of tourists are taking pictures of the rooms the family once resided in, now open for public viewing.
We are in one of the few cordoned-off areas, equally magnificent, with walls gilded in 24-carat gold. Photographs show Singh’s maternal grandparents, the late Maharaja Brigadier Sawai Bhawani Singh and Rajmata Padmini Devi, with the Prince of Wales, the Duchess of Cornwall and Oprah Winfrey.
“[Living in a palace] takes you back to the 1940s or the 1930s, and makes you think how life must have been back then,” Singh says.
While Singh is best known as the head of a once royal family, he considers himself first and foremost a polo player. He is a member of both the Federation of International Polo and the Guards Polo Club of Windsor and has played with both Prince William and Prince Harry.
“The first time I felt that I had achieved something on my own was through polo,” he says. His eyes light up when he talks about his favourite horse, who was recently injured.
Polo is one of the world’s most high-end sports, with a niche following at best, but Singh is convinced that it can reach a wider audience. He donates his polo earnings to his father’s organisation, the Royal Jaipur Polo Foundation, which invites children from lower socio-economic backgrounds to learn to play the sport.
“By the time I’m 32, ideally I want to see some of these kids become professional [polo players],” he says.
Singh, who is studying museology and art history at the Università e Nobil Collegio St Eligio in Rome, also sees himself as an ambassador to his city, and is keen to boost tourism. Jaipur is situated within the Tourism Golden Triangle of India that includes Delhi and Agra, and before the coronavirus outbreak, it expected to welcome 50m visitors in 2020. The royal family owns some of the properties, hotels and forts frequented by tourists.
When Airbnb came knocking last year, inquiring whether Singh might rent out part of the City Palace for its guests, he initially hesitated to open up more of his family estate — but agreed on the condition that proceeds from the bookings would go to his mother’s charity, the Princess Diya Kumari Foundation, which supports rural women and artisans.
Amanpreet Singh Bajaj, country head of Airbnb, says that Singh was involved every step of the way, “from the planning to the execution of the campaign to the setting up of the suite”.
The room, the Gudliya Suite, only a few feet from Singh’s own residence, has an indoor pool, terrace and walk-in wardrobe, and costs $8,000 per night. A butler and guide are on hand to arrange curated city experiences, including shopping tours and visits to local museums.
Raghavendra Rathore, an Indian menswear designer who dressed Singh for his 2011 coronation ceremony, and a member of the Jodhpur royal family, says this inclusive approach to royalty makes Singh a “textbook envoy of a modern Indian”. Rathore observes that working with his family’s charitable endeavours — an extensive list that includes trusts and museums — is Singh’s calling and responsibility.
“You have to think beyond yourself,” Singh says of his duty towards the people of Jaipur, something his parents instilled in him at an early age. He is doing his best to represent his grandfather, he says. “He was a huge aficionado of shoes,” Singh says, “I need to find a way to fit into them.”
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