Silver Jewellery Gets A Brand New Lease Of Life

Young designers, edgy motifs and celebrity endorsements are giving silver jewellery a brand new lease of life.

- Sonali Acharjee

When Meena Nair got married two years ago, her priorities changed. The 32-year-old fashion designer from Chennai felt that she could no longer afford to splurge on new gold sets and accessories for every wedding she attended. Yet she wanted to be in vogue. She certainly didn’t want to be the one who arrived at every function wearing the same old jewellery. “The wedding season was coming up and I had already received close to six invitations. My husband and I were planning to have a child soon and I realised that I just couldn’t afford to invest in gold anymore. When I started asking around, I realised that a lack of alternatives for gold jewellery is something that many youngsters faced in the city,” she explains. Her interest piqued, Nair started her own gold-plated silver line, Silvermore. “I didn’t have the capital to set up a shop, so I began a made-to-order service. People can bring me any gold design they like and I will replicate it for them, using silver as a base instead of gold. This reduces the price by more than 50 per cent. Instead of spending Rs 5-8 lakh on a wedding set, you’ll now spend only Rs 20,000-30,000. And the outer covering is 22 carat gold. No one will even know the difference,” adds Nair.

Starting out, however, was anything but easy with Nair facing stiff resistance from the crafts community in the city. “There is obviously a lot more money