Unconventionally yours: Jewellery that screams 'rebel'
Self-taught designer Nitya Arora is anything but a conformist. Every word she utters, speaks of creative rebellion, and her retro-futuristic jewellery brand, Valliyan, epitomises her passion for championing individuality. Her latest collection—Valliyan 5.0—charts an unusual course within the jewellery landscape with hyper experimentation. This is seen through the singular pieces that come in the most peculiar shapes, embellished with gems, semi-precious stones and Swarovski.
Arora’s artistic audacity is well-known within the fraternity, thanks to her off-beat choices in material combinations, the most popular one being the juxtaposition of kundan with neon beads, which became an instant rage when it was launched a few years ago. This was followed by her innovative laser-cut acrylic jewellery, which has now become a brand signature. With an eye for all things unconventional, the new collection includes a profusion of bee, butterflies and beetle motifs, which usually don’t make it to jewellery designs. Arora, however, wanted to highlight the totemic significance of these ignored creatures.
Where does she get her creative temerity from? A book she read many years ago, called The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. It portrayed a society’s struggle to accept new ideas, and the need to push conventional boundaries to make space for innovation. The impact of the book can be seen in Valliyan 5.0. Besides the usual rings, earrings, cuffs, bracelets, necklaces and chokers, it also features outré compositions. The oversized sunflower earrings, lobster-inspired gold medallions, the unorthodox thighlets and glittering garters reflect the designer’s purposeful approach towards jewellery design. The new line also aims at capturing the profound societal and economic shifts expected with Industry 5.0, where robots and smart machines will work alongside human beings to improve efficiency. “I wanted to do something disruptive and make my jewellery a conversation starter,” she says.
Her vision translated into reality at the recent Lakme Fashion Week, where she broke away from archaic runway formats and collaborated with Dragalactiq, a collective of queer performing artists, and drag performer Glorious Luna, to put forth a surreal and theatrical presentation with bejewelled limbs and faces peering through dark velvet curtains, against a backdrop of robotic jewelled bugs being projected on the AV. Quite a unique spectacle, much like Arora’s jewellery.
Available at: Valliyan.com