On Sat­ur­day evening, amid soft lights and warm con­ver­sa­tion, a crowd of clients, de­sign­ers, and well-wish­ers gath­ered at 21 Stone Street, Port-of-Spain. The oc­ca­sion was more than the open­ing of a new re­tail show­room. For lead de­sign­er and man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Vani Ma­haraj, it was the cul­mi­na­tion of a child­hood dream.

“As a young girl, I al­ways had a love for in­te­ri­or de­sign. I didn’t just see fur­ni­ture and colours—I saw pos­si­bil­i­ties,” she re­flect­ed, stand­ing among the el­e­gant­ly arranged dis­plays. “What start­ed as a pas­sion slow­ly be­came my pur­pose. Through de­sign, I re­alised I could make peo­ple hap­py. And that fire has nev­er gone out.”

The launch of Di­vine Liv­ing’s new space marked a fresh chap­ter for the com­pa­ny, which Vani has nur­tured along­side gen­er­al man­ag­er Kee­gan Ma­hara­jh. For the duo, the show­room rep­re­sents not just a mile­stone in busi­ness, but a reimag­in­ing of what fur­ni­ture shop­ping could feel like in T&T.

Walk­ing through the show­room, it is im­me­di­ate­ly clear that Di­vine Liv­ing aims to blur the line be­tween re­tail and de­sign stu­dio. Every cor­ner is cu­rat­ed like a lived-in space—fur­ni­ture, ac­ces­sories, and lay­out work­ing in har­mo­ny.

“We are not in the busi­ness of mass pro­duc­tion,” Kee­gan ex­plained. “We are de­sign­ers first. What you see here are one-of-a-kind, tai­lor-made, be­spoke de­signs. A chair is not just a chair. A so­fa is not just a so­fa. Each piece tells a sto­ry and adds to a vi­sion of home.”

That phi­los­o­phy means cus­tomers aren’t sim­ply buy­ing fur­ni­ture; they’re buy­ing in­to a way of liv­ing. Staffed by trained de­sign­ers, the show­room ex­pe­ri­ence promis­es guid­ance be­yond the show­room floor—help­ing clients imag­ine how each piece might trans­form their own spaces.

The launch evening was as much about com­mu­ni­ty as de­sign. Friends, fam­i­ly, and fel­low cre­atives min­gled in the glow of Vani’s achieve­ment, while speak­ers in­clud­ing Jer­ry Narace and Ch­agua­nas May­or Faaiq Mo­hammed praised the team’s ded­i­ca­tion and its con­tri­bu­tion to the lo­cal de­sign in­dus­try.

There was laugh­ter, pride, and more than a touch of emo­tion.

“Stand­ing here to­day, in this re­tail show­room, I can say with a full heart this has al­ways been a dream of mine,” Vani told guests. “But this isn’t the fin­ish line—this is just the be­gin­ning.”