It’s a love story, one that doesn’t necessarily have a happy ending, or it could. “It’s about passion, ambition…It’s about how people obsess over something or somebody and how they lose themselves in it,” says jewellery designer Suhani Pittie about her collection Found and Lost. The theme is inspired by flowers, bees and wilted leaves and the jewellery depict the love-pain balance. “That’s why in some pieces the chains look worn out,” she says.
Found and Lost was part of her creation for the Lakme Fashion Week Winter/Festive 2014 but the designer has added to the collection and made it more practical. There are over 100 pieces now. On display at Evoluzione today and tomorrow, the range features traditional and unconventional ornaments such as hairpins, ear buttons, ear cuffs, earrings, hand harnesses, shoulder cuffs, necklace, belts, buckles, arm cuffs, wrist cuffs, palm cuffs, gloves, bracelets and rings in German silver, plated brass, plated copper, acrylic and pearl. Minakari, Indian repousse, lacework, folding, pressing, shredding, curling, levelling and extrusion have gone into creating this line.
Her favourite of the lot is a simple necklace that has thorny leaves in dull silver. The shoulder cuffs are something Suhani loves — they are warrior-like and yet have a sense of fragility about them.
A former teacher of gemmology , the 33 year-old got into jewellery designing quite by chance. She happened to design for someone in her family and next thing she knew was that she had come up with her first collection Grunge Begum in 2010, and many took to its shine. Next came Urban Folk, Child of Eden and Dances of Earth. Silver played a large role in her early collections. “People always said silver is junk and it really bothered me. So I came up with ornaments where we took the ‘junk’ out of silver and gave it texture,” she says.
Drawn to all things classic, she says, while most people say “naya” she keeps saying “purana, purana, purana.” That explains why the lady lives in a haveli in Hyderabad that’s over 200 years old and has a collection of over 100 vintage wrist watches that she’s managed to procure from various sources, including her grand parents. “Some of them don’t work but I don’t care,” she smiles.
She believes that certain things in life are timeless and for keeps — like jewellery. “It’s part of our heritage, it’s a hand-me-down. It is personal and representative of who you are.”
