“I used to cry over copycats of my designs”: jewellery designer Bhavya Ramesh

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Looking at her bold, singular designs, it is hard to believe that jewellery designer Bhavya Ramesh never formally studied the craft. The engineering graduate, who describes herself as “completely self-taught”, started her eponymous label in 2018 with a small investment from her father, and one clear goal: “I wanted people to look at my work and say, ‘I’ve never seen anything like this before.’ That’s still my only aim,” she tells Lounge over a video call from Mumbai.A D2C brand that began online, the label has, in recent years, made a confident leap into offline retail, with two stores in Mumbai and a newly launched outpost in Khan Market, Delhi. While the move signals the brand’s growth, Ramesh says the real push came from customers.

“Our jewellery is very experimental, so people kept asking, ‘Can I see this in person? Do you have a store?’” she says. With manufacturing, e-commerce and distribution already in place, the gap became evident. “I realised my front end was almost dead.

Retail was the missing piece, and if anything made me realise it faster, it was the customers themselves.”In this freewheeling interview, the Ramesh spoke at length about everything from the creative process of designing her stores to her ‘maximalist’ style, her offbeat inspirations, why she chose to work with silver and more. Edited excerpts:Honestly, every phase feels crowded. Even when I started, I felt there were too many jewellery brands.

What matters is how you build your brand—your scale, your consistency, your aesthetic. People can see the difference between something serious and something surface-level. Even today, when it comes to silver jewellery, I don’t see many brands at scale.