Who Designed Those Amazing Ambani Wedding Party Jewels?
BY STELLENE VOLANDES
Town & Country
Editor-in-Chief of Town & Country Magazine, Stellene Volandes, has a love for gems and jewels. And so it is not unusual for her to tell us that she has been inundated by her avid readers, asking to find out who the jewelry designer is for those big fabulous emerald necklaces being worn at the Ambani wedding!
Here is her story:
“Find out who designed this jewelry!” I have received all of your direct messages, texts, and emails and I am ready to respond. Who was the designer behind one of the most important jewelry moments of the year (decade?). Turns out, I know the man, and I should have known immediately. Few other people in the world could have designed the pieces in those viral images of the pre-wedding festivities of Anant Ambani and Radhika Merchant.
The man behind many of the pearls, emeralds, and diamonds in those pictures (matriarch Nita Ambani and her daughter Isha, the groom’s sister, above) has been hailed as “the greatest jeweler of our time,” and “jewelry’s quiet superstar.” He has been called a “mysterious genius” more than once. His name is Viren Bhagat. You might not have heard it spoken before, you have not seen it on the red carpet or sold in stores, or in a newspaper advertisement or even that much on Instagram (until now). It’s the way he wants it.
I had the privilege of seeing Bhagat and even trying on some of his one-of-a-kind creations at the TEFAF fair in Maastricht last week. I wish I had pictures to show you, of the pearl tassel bracelet that hung so delicately across my wrist and down my hand, or of those antique spinel and diamond half moon earrings—but no photos allowed. Discretion is as valuable to Bhagat as the natural pearls, Golconda diamonds, Kashmir sapphires, and Burmese rubies in his handcrafted wonders.
He is a fourth generation jeweler with headquarters in Mumbai (his sons make it a fifth generation business). He designs only a few pieces a year. They are all made with the most exceptional stones in the world and are crafted with old world techniques but are at the same time modern in design, finish, and construction. I included Viren Bhagat in my book about the best contemporary jewelers in the world (published in 2016) and he told me then about the exacting standards and unwavering devotion to excellence that set his pieces apart: “We work only in platinum which is not traditional in Indian jewelry. I am very old school about this. There is a trend to use titanium and aluminum, which I respect, but if you see what Cartier was doing in the 1920s, it was platinum. It has both lightness and strength. Our pieces begin from one block of metal. A guy goes in and carves by hand.”
Tap here for Volandes’ full report on these incredible jewels!
