Metal Head

There’s a tensile strength in the delicate lines of Suhani Pittie’s jewellery. Ten years on and she’s still a master of that fine balance.

- Nishat Fatima

It’s 8.30 in the morning and Suhani Pittie is bright, cheerful and, in sharp contrast to me, awake. She’s been that way since 7am when hair and make-up started. We’re at the over-200-year-old Pittie haveli in Begum Bazar, Hyderabad and the designer is picking her ensemble for the shot, which comprises a vintage lehenga, a T-shirt, booties and one blue denim jacket for a pop of colour. There’s no other way to describe it, it’s all so very ‘Grunge Begum’.

The inspiration for that very successful 2010 collection is all around us. It’s from this haveli that Pittie started her brand (“Pure fluke.”). This year, it complete 10 years—and that is anything but a fluke. If you’ve followed her journey from the beginning, as I have, it’s tempting to reach about for trailing phrases like “just yesterday…”, “so young...”, “time flies…”. Of course, as the 23-year-old bride of entrepreneur Stouvant Pittie, the designer was fully grown by the time she moved to Hyderabad from Kolkata, and had already run one business, a gemology training institute. Pittie, now 35, is now operating on a much larger canvas, and preoccupied with things like corporatisation, venture funding and creating a legacy. She has no doubt she will, and nor do you.