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When Pantone announced Cloud Dancer as its colour of the year, the internet did what it does best. Some dismissed it as another beige-adjacent non-event. Others embraced it as a calming reset in a year heavy with noise. I found myself doing something else entirely: scrolling, bookmarking and looking closely at jewellery.
Tamannaah Bhatia’s post sat in my archives as I tried to reverse image search a necklace she was wearing in her reaction to Pantone's announcement. The tubular gold neckpiece sat high but with space to breathe, interrupted only by a single drop diamond. But my searches came up empty, so I added the neckpiece, double hoops and huggie earrings to my moodboard to continue my experimentation with personal style.
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If I did that search now, it would take me to Tamannaah Fine Jewellery. You see, the actor–now designer and entrepreneur–has been soft launching her fine jewellery brand for some time now. A photo dump here, an award ceremony there and selfies across her feed.
When we speak, she is pragmatic about how the brand came into being. Jewellery, she explains, wasn’t a strategic pivot so much as something that had always existed alongside her life, waiting for the right moment to surface. “My father's a businessman. Look, we're Sindhi. So, according to ‘culture’, we've always been business people,” she laughs. Her father has been a jeweller with a retail store for the past 15 years. While he was working on his store, she built her acting career. That world has always been a part of her life, she says, “but I never felt like I would naturally gravitate towards it at that time. I was very focused on acting.”
What was a mainstay was a childhood association that had little to do with ambition. When she was unwell or scared, her father would take her to a small jewellery store nearby. “Whenever I had a bad day, he would say, ‘Let’s treat you,’” she recalls. The memory is one of comfort; jewellery as something that soothed rather than signalled success.
As we grow older, she says, that instinct falls away. “You forget to treat yourself the way you would as a child,” she says. Her career demanded daily fittings, hours in the makeup chair and a constant state of readiness and jewellery returned in a different form. Through experimentation, she was building her own aesthetic language. “There was a phase where I was very consciously experimenting and trying to find my own voice within the space of fashion.”
There was a turning point, she says, when she realised discomfort had become part of her job. “I wore a really tight dress to an event and told myself I would never feel that uncomfortable again.” From that moment, she began to build what she describes as “casual glamour” into her wardrobe: clothes and jewellery that felt elevated but allowed her to move through long days. “I was really gravitating towards bold gold,” she says, often in the form of vintage pieces that approximated the look she wanted.
But those pieces didn’t hold up. One earring broke mid-event and had to be returned to her by a fan who spotted it on the floor. “I live a hectic life and I want jewellery that can keep up.”
Urban India had largely caught up with global fashion cycles. Jewellery, however, she finds, is still segmented. “If I’m getting married or attending something formal, I know exactly where to go,” she says. “But if I have a lunch meeting, then the gym, then a party on the same day, there was nothing that worked through all of that.” That's the thought she kept in mind for the past two years while working on the collection of pieces designed to be worn continuously, without the need to rejig or pivot. Jewellery you could sleep in, work out in, forget you’re wearing. “I’m very lazy,” she admits, laughing. “If it doesn’t shut in one click and give me that feeling of relief, I don’t want it.” She tests every piece on herself, wearing it through long nights and early mornings. “That’s the only way I know what will actually work for someone else.”
Functionality, she insists, isn’t separate from design. It is the design. Clasps become focal points. Closures are engineered to feel secure. Even the tone of the metal is considered in relation to everyday hardware. It’s obsessive, by her own admission. “I always get the ick when my jewellery doesn't match the zips or buttons." She describes a long-standing irritation with white gold that didn’t sit right against clothing.
That thinking extends beyond the jewellery itself. She sees the brand not just as a product line, but as a physical experience. While much of the focus has been on getting the pieces right, she’s equally attentive to how they will live in their brick-and-mortar space in Juhu, Mumbai, and how people will move through it.
She's found layers of herself through the process of creation. After playing muse for others to dress up and style, she's now creating from scratch. “I want to give you aspect of who I think I am, who I want to be and also who I think people are.” Asked if she ever worried about designing too much for herself, she draws a parallel with her taste in films. “I’m very mass,” she says. “I love things that are accessible.” Hoops, for instance, became a starting point precisely because of their universality. “I’ve never seen anyone not look good in hoops,” she says. The pieces she reaches for most are the ones that have already been absorbed into her routine because they don't require much thought. “When it becomes something you reach for automatically,” she says, “That’s when you know it’s right.”
That first bookmarked image makes sense now. A white T-shirt, bare skin, jewellery worn without ceremony, a part of a day already underway. Jewellery, as Bhatia describes it, that is meant to be worn, lived with, slept in and trusted enough to stop thinking about altogether.
Also read:
The cinematic life of Indian jewellery
I swore by minimalism until maximalist jewellery changed my mind
Tamannaah Bhatia’s butter yellow Manish Malhotra gown is adorned with crystal work
