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The Midas touch
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The use of enamel, wood and leather turns traditional gold jewellery into trendy works of art
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MAKEOVER TIME Innovation is the key PHOTOS: K.ANANTHAN
The yellow metal no longer means chunky suffocating necklaces that cling to your neck and bangles that cuff your wrists.
There is a panoply of options for those who still swear by gold.
Puritans may baulk at this, but hold on. The designs are ethno-contemporary and can get as interesting as having wood and leather as embellishments.
From the time goldsmiths rubbed life into the shiny metal to create ornaments, gold has come a long way.
Now, innovative designs rule and the funkier the design, the better.
From intricate filigree work and traditional patterns with stones, the interest, especially of the younger crowd, has moved to Western designs.
Lighter designs
"These designs have a highly polished finish and are much lighter than the traditional ones," says K.Srinivasan, Managing Director of Emerald Jewel Industry.
That is when innovative ideas like wood and leather come in.
"Enamel has been in the market for some time. But, wood and leather are new introductions.
Weaving strands of leather and tiny pieces of wood into the ornament adds a touch of class to them," he says.
Texturing has grown from matt finish to sand-blasted and scratch finish, that give the ornaments a new look.
Coloured gold
That is not all. Seems like you can no longer call gold the yellow metal.
Colours are in. With white gold already becoming a hot favourite among the college-goers, jewellers are also looking at something as wacky as red.
Even though it is the high-end customers who go in for these trendy designs in Coimbatore, youngsters have been showing a lot of interest in contemporary light-weight jewellery with custom-made designs such as these, Srinivasan says.
Promoting design
These days, most of the jewellery outlets have their own designers to promote custom made designs.
Jewellers are also doing things to promote jewellery designing. Anglogold Ashanti Auditions, a global brand, which has been created to showcase jewellery-design talent was launched in India in association with the World Gold Council and D'damas during September-October.
Out of the 1,500 entries that were short-listed, 40 were chosen, which will be showcased in Mumbai in the third week of March.
The collection will be taken across to various countries too, says K.Shivram, Vice President, World Gold Council.
ANASUYA MENON
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