“Luxury means a feel-good finished product”
Gauri Tandon has a trick for finding out whether or not a piece of jewellery fits her standard for luxury. “I always turn it around and look at the back to see how it is finished,” she says. At Isharya’s Bandra store, launched in August, Tandon demonstrates this with a pair of earrings from their Hampi Collection. Turning the white resin pearl drop earrings around, she displays the clean metallic back and the fine filigree work in the design of Isharya’s logo. The earrings are double backed with an omega back as well as a push clasp that ensures the jewellery sits comfortably on the earlobe. The back looks as good as the front and this is one of the reasons why they retail the pair of 18 carat gold-plated brass earrings for `7,080.
Jewellery has always been a passion for Tandon. She’s a hoarder, she admits, and has no idea how many pieces she has collected over the years. It is an obsession she shares with her sister-in-law and business partner Radhika Tandon. While Tandon overlooks the design team in India, California-based Radhika keeps an eye on market trends, buyer feedback, global sales and brand presence. After all, with Hollywood’s repeated stamp of approval (they’ve found fans in Sofia Vergara, Lucy Lui, Jennifer Lopez, Drew Barrymore, Cindy Crawford and others) the US remains a big market for them. Now 14 years old, Isharya’s presence has grown in 60 countries across North America, Europe, the Middle East and Asia. “When we first began, no one was doing Indian costume jewellery. They were either into fine jewellery or bottom of the barrel stuff,” says Tandon. A key investment for the company has been a showroom in Paris, which caters to the international buyers for stores such as Harvey Nichols and Bloomingdales, where Isharya is retailed.