Bhavya Ramesh: The Silver Touch

Jewellery is accessory and adornment, a means of decorating the body. For jewellery designer Bhavya Ramesh, it can be an extension of the body itself. “For me, the most powerful thing about designing is being able to recreate what the Creator has made—hairlines, nails, fingers,” she says. Ramesh’s eponymous silver jewellery label abounds with designs to clarify this statement. Take for instance her most popular offering—nail rings, which have been embraced by men and women alike. A clever take on rings, these cover the nail bed like jewelled masks and stand out like metal talons often embellished with pearls, Kundan, enamelling, and other jewellery tech­niques. “Everyone gets their nails done. I thought, since I am a jeweller, how could I bring something to the table when it comes to nail art,” she says. “I’ve always had the urge to bring something new to jewellery.”

Her brand’s edgy, avant-garde vibe is Ramesh’s biggest USP. Branding and popular imagery has convention­ally posited jewellery as feminine and pretty. Unisex designs or jewels for men are often posited as new-age sartorial choices, although men in many cultures—certainly in the Indian subcontinent—have historically worn jewellery. The label is often described as gender-neutral, partly due to the many male and non-binary models in her campaigns. But Ramesh doesn’t create with an end user in mind. “I don’t assign gender to jewellery. When designing, I don’t do it for men or women,” the de­signer observes. “At the core, I am driven by concepts, ideas, and emotions.” If her designs seem to inherently defy what is often perceived as women’s adornment, it is because Ramesh challenges the very form and function of jewellery.

Born and raised in Bengaluru, and now based in Mumbai, 31-year-old Ramesh came up with nail rings (also called nail crowns) not long after she started her label in 2018. An array of nail ornaments has flooded the market since, but think nail crowns and Ramesh instantly comes to mind. The design, which till date remains Bhavya Ramesh’s hottest-selling item, marked for its maker the first big leap towards creating a label that has come to be known for its cutting-edge aesthetics and products. Think elaborate head­gears that fit the head like futuristic helmets, gilded sunglasses that have been seen on the likes of movie star Thalapathy Vijay and musician Raja Kumari, and webbed finger jewel­lery that resemble spiderwebs. Hair clips are shaped like slithering snakes, necklaces like dancing apsaras. All of it crafted by Indian artisans in a new vocabulary of jewellery design—as the brand’s Instagram proclaims, #nobodydoitlikebr.

Ramesh initially studied engineer­ing and dabbled in DIY as a hobby. “No­body who has known me from a young age would think I would ever become a jewellery designer. I didn’t either,” she says. “I was quite the hippie and tried to make a lot of things by hand.” That includes making dreamcatch­ers—an early passion—with materials like coconut shells and patchworked clothes inspired by banjara aesthetics. She also collected jewellery and made some of her own, but it wasn’t her focus. So, it was a surprise when the “bits and pieces” of jewellery she had put together outsold her clothes and dreamcatchers at a popup in 2018. The fact that she worked with silver also gave her a sense of security. “Clothes interested me, and I was in fact a little more exposed to the process of making it—as Indians, we often go to tailors, get clothes made. But I was not aware of what it takes to make a piece of jewellery,” she says. Despite this, jewellery felt like a safe choice. “Even if it wouldn’t sell, I could make use of the sil­ver. It was a life-changing perspective— I’d to decide what I needed to do, and I decided on jewellery.”

As a first-generation jeweller, Ramesh worked out the nitty-gritty of her business on her own—armed with sketches in her notebook and no Plan B. The early months were difficult as she struggled to find the right craftspeople in Bengaluru. On the recommendation of a jeweller, she visited a trade show and met a manufacturer in Jaipur who agreed to collaborate. Ramesh’s first collections featured more conventional product categories—earrings, neckpieces, nose pins in different designs and price points. But she had her eye on new ideas from the beginning. “I didn’t immediately introduce new categories, but I did so the minute I had some confidence that people liked my designs and bought them.”

Ramesh’s work was instantly se­ductive, catering to a consumer niche looking for new interventions and de­signs in the Indian market where tra­ditional jewellery remains dominant. She hasn’t looked back since, creating pieces that keep growing in ambition and scale. Anything less, she confesses, induces boredom. Developing each of these products requires extensive de­sign R&D, especially because Ramesh is determined to use Indian artisanal knowledge in innovative ways. “As I have been exposed to jewellery mak­ing and what it takes to bring a design to life, I have realised that nobody can do what we can do in India. I wanted to keep the artisanal look and feel alive. We must do justice to the art forms and artisans we have,” she says.

Technical mastery and well-engineered products are always appealing, for which she credits her engineering and science background (apart from the fact that she designed her first website herself). Ramesh’s designs are not only auda­cious in form and presentation, but also in her interpretation of cultural ideas and storytelling that appeals to a global audience. Take, for instance, the Ancient Aliens collection launched in 2024, whose campaign imagined Indian mythological heroes as superpowered extra-terrestrial beings. GilGa, unveiled this January, is rooted in a serpentine inspiration—seem­ingly otherworldly in its campaign execution, but also timely when one remembers that 2025 is, according to the Chinese zodiac, the year of the wood snake.

A Bhavya Ramesh collection is always, to use Gen-Z lingo, ‘extra’. Mak­ing big, bold statements, one collection may depict a combat scene, another may narrate a story of wild revelry over an Onam Sadhya. Models may be dyed in acidic hues or made up to resemble snakes. The effect can be polarising— exquisite to some, terrifying to others, but never dull. For Ramesh, creating a collection or campaign is a means of finding an expression for her feelings. “In the beginning, I didn’t know how to put collections together—my first few pieces were inspired by different things, and having to make collec­tions didn’t make sense to me. But I came to understand the importance of storytelling and how one can emote through a collection.” She considers her Poison collection to be the first that really attempted storytelling; the 2022 collection evoked something akin to a dangerous love with references to poi­son rings and pillboxes—an antithesis to the sweet romance synonymous with Valentine’s Day (the collection launched days before February 14).

Ramesh’s success can be eas­ily attributed to her creativity, but business acumen plays an equal, and frequently, a greater role. It is evident in her choice of silver over any other base materials to craft her jewellery. Ramesh loves silver not only for its aesthetic value, but also the security it offers—a byproduct of her “traditional Indian mentality”, she quips. “Some­times, I do think life would be easier if I made brass jewellery. With silver, I have to manage costs, but I am glad to work with precious metals because they have value and their prices keep rising.” To recreate silver into new in­ventive designs, she has invested time in building a bond with karigars—the same has been creating her samples for several years now—and partnering with her jewellery manufacturer to enable a steady supply chain. What began as a solo independent venture is now a well-known business label. Its expanding operations include a factory in Jaipur with 60 artisans who undertake everything from polish­ing and plating to stone-cutting and Kundan setting in-house.

In Mumbai, where the brand is headquartered, she works with a team of seven people plus retail which spans online operations and a spectacularly designed—by Ramesh herself—flag­ship store in Kala Ghoda. Experi­mental designs, from nail crowns to jewelled sunglasses, comprise the major chunk of Ramesh’s revenue, in turn boosting her confidence to keep innovating.

When she isn’t moulding silver to her will, the designer is a homebody who describes herself as a “sweet, ten­der, and loving” person. “I love hosting people, planning menus, and cooking. I decorate my home with interesting things, I like gardening.” These traits cut a different figure of Ramesh from her edgy public image; she calls it her alter ego. It is a fitting mix for a creative woman whose practice is rooted in bringing tradition and futurism to­gether. Like her jewels, Ramesh keeps pushing the boundaries of who she is, and what she can be.

Bhavya Rameshdesignerfashionjewellerywomen issue 2025