Now statement pieces over chunky jewellery

The Chief Design Officer at Titan talks about changing trends in jewellery and what the new-age customer looks for.

One of the speakers at the ongoing design festival, ‘Bengaluru ByDesign’, was Revathi Kant, Chief Design Officer at Titan. She spoke about reinventing products for Millenials. Rajitha Menon understands more about this.

Revathi Kant

What is the nature of your job at Titan?

Provide strategic design directions to the team to create the right product for each consumer segment keeping in view the brand philosophy. This can be very challenging especially when the portfolio has many brands in each category. But this gives rise to innovation.

Where do you draw inspiration from?

Practically anything and everything. But the ability of inspiration to lend itself to good interpretation is an important factor to be kept in mind.

What is the trend when it comes to designing jewellery for millennials?

Millennials are the first generation to be inherently digital. They live through Facebook and Instagram and looking and feeling good is important for them. Jewellery is no longer meant for the lockers. So the key trends are contemporary, lightweight, comfortable, ease of usage, distinctiveness.

Are more and more young women opting for a no-jewellery look?

Not really, women are taking care to dress up and look good. It’s styling that is changing. They are far more comfortable wearing one statement ring or one distinct piece.

Some things you keep in mind while designing jewellery?

Gold weight and price points play an important part in positioning jewellery. The technology (CNC/laser) or the ‘karigari’ (in case of handmade jewellery) used is an important parameter. The inspiration, trends and design directions keeping the end consumer in mind defines the look of the collection.

Tanishq created jewellery for Deepika in the movie Padmaavat. What were the challenges you faced?

The first challenge was to research and come up with historical truths of the 13th century, as very little of that is documented. Then using imagination to create products which are relevant to the character and meets the director’s imagination.

Could you tell us about IDF and Titan’s participation at Bengaluru ByDesign?

BBD is a great platform to bring design sensitiveness at the grassroots levels. Through our brands across various categories, we democratise designs so that we are able to touch a wide audience and provide them with great designs.