Meet Arundhati De Sheth, the bespoke jewellery consultant

With the country’s swish set reaching out to her, jewellery consultant Arundhati De is making a mark with original pieces and uncommon designers.

A curated jewellery pop-up at Le Mill in Mumbai over a year ago propelled her advisory business. It drew in stylish women, both young and old, to peruse a selection ranging from do-it-yourself name bracelets for ₹12,000 to a necklace for ₹30 lakh. “Till then, it was all quite ad hoc. I used to take family friends, who were visiting India, jewellery shopping, and help my friends when they asked for my opinion,” she says. “But after this [the pop-up], I thought ‘I don’t know if this is a profession but it is something I love’, so why not try it? I got business cards and built a website!”

Today, she has clients like fashion entrepreneur Pernia Qureshi, who turned to Sheth when she wanted to gift herself a pair of statement earrings. “Arundhati can find you things that are uncommon,” says Qureshi. Like intricate pieces from metalsmith Shachee Shah, who works with micro-mosaic glass and woven gold jewellery. “My engineering is small scale; I only have 25 pieces in my studio. But Arundhati has a great understanding of what people want and connects them to the right designer,” says Shah.

A jinx broken

Interestingly, Sheth’s relationship with gems had an inglorious start. “Jewellery would just break in my hands, or mysteriously get lost,” she recalls. Her mother, Shobhaa De, calls it a “traumatic phase”, when she wrecked nearly everything she touched. “She’d borrow my most-loved chokers and earrings, and I’d be on tenterhooks till she came home, wondering whether I’d ever see them again. Or, find them intact.”

Born and raised in Mumbai, in a household Sheth describes as “atypical,” she grew up around art and artefacts. “My mother started working when she was young and she used to tell us [her four siblings from her parents’ previous marriages, and a younger sister] that even if she got a cheque for ₹10,000, she’d buy jewellery,” she says. Shobhaa De is now happy that her daughters have “finally started to appreciate all the pieces I meticulously collected over 50 years”.

Expanding her reach

In 2016, after Sheth got married and had two children in rapid succession, she began contributing to Harper’s Bazaar, writing jewellery stories, visiting Jaipur and its gem-filled bazaars. Seeing such beauty, she wondered why people who bought luxury bags and shoes seasonally couldn’t be encouraged to buy jewels more regularly, especially when much of it was made in India. Her advisory business was in response to that. “Jewellery is made with as much thoughtfulness, creativity and innovation as an artwork. It needs to be viewed, valued and worn in that spirit,” says Sheth, who curated her second pop-up at Le Mill last month.

She structures her fees much like an interior designer — a mix of a flat charge and a variable component linked to the value of the jewel she sources. Her value proposition is that she works on behalf of her client to negotiate the best price with a seller and passes those savings on to the buyer. Currently, she has three clients on an annual retainer, while the others pay her a percentage of the value of the item bought (between 1% and 10%). Next year, she hopes to expand the business, working with more private clients but also, perhaps, consulting for jewellery and retail stores.

Courtesy: THEHINDU