Masculinity and Meenakari

Few jewellery designers have shaped the contemporary understanding of Meenakari in the way that Sunita Shekhawat has. Years of working closely with the craft through archives, ateliers, and lived heritage have translated into ‘Mhaaro’, a deeply personal exploration that places museum collectibles from the Museum of Meenakari Heritage, alongside creations from the House of Sunita Shekhawat, and heirlooms from the Shekhawat family vault with her newest interpretation of men’s adornment. She draws heavily from a Rajasthan that she grew up in where men have always worn jewellery, from sarpech-stacked royalty to farmers in dhotis with pierced ears. We speak to Sunita Shekhawat and her daughter, Niharika Shekhawat, on reasserting the craft as personal, expressive, and decisively modern for men today.

Walk me through your creative process.

Sunita Shekhawat (SS): When you’ve been in this business for 30 years, ideas come randomly. But putting all your ideas into one frame is madness. Your mind is constantly busy. Some ideas keep popping up, but execution is where it really matters. You have to sit quietly with your artisans to bring ideas to life. The process is long. Even if I have eight or ten ideas, only two reach the level of execution. As they say, ideas are chief, execution is king, especially in jewellery. Three-dimensional pieces are not easy, even with new software. It requires a lot of skill.

How long does it take to create these pieces?

SS: We are not bound by seasons. Jewellery is timeless, it doesn’t work like couture. There’s no fall-winter or spring-summer. Jewellery doesn’t follow seasons. It takes a minimum of six to eight months, sometimes up to ten months.

Which is your favourite piece from the collection?

SS: One of my favourites is the sun. It’s a pendant, but it can also be worn as a pocket pin or even styled like a harness. This piece has a rare carved ruby at the base. It’s very versatile. For the family that we come from, the Kachwahas of the Shekhawat dynasty, the sun is our emblem. It has always been worshipped across civilizations be it the Romans, the Greeks or others. Everyone on earth worships the sun in some form.

Meenakari often lives on the reverse of a piece. Do you think discretion is part of the luxury appeal?

SS: Yes, absolutely. Discretion allows you to give two different flavours in one piece. A brighter blue, turquoise, or emerald green might work better for evenings, while pastel shades like ivory, mint green, or lilac work beautifully during the day. It gives me the liberty to make one piece that can be worn at two different times and two different occasions as well. Somewhere that mindset comes from my upbringing of coming from a defence background where we believed in the ‘Less is more’ way of thinking.

And how has your upbringing translated into your design philosophy and way of working?

SS: I think the best value system till date, comes from the middle class upbringing. We have always been taught ‘less is more’. Jitna kum hai utna acha hai, because you always want to achieve more when you have less. Abundance jo kehete hai na, kuch nahi hota. You add something extra to the ordinary to make it extraordinary.

Why did this moment feel right to centre men in your jewellery narrative?

NS: I think it always existed, we just hadn’t labelled it. Sometimes you don’t realise what you hold until you announce it to yourself. Women have owned vanity for a long time. It’s time men are given that space too. Today, men often lose their cultural identity. Women often wear different things like a Kanjivaram or a Paithani or a Rajasthani Bandhani but when it comes to men they are only matching their embroidery to the lehengas of the bride. They should be their own person. Men have their own language and it shouldn’t be a matching necklace or a matching button set. When we were shooting I was asked if I wanted to shoot on a female model and I refused. I didn’t want to show a couple in love. I wanted the man to be his own person. Even when we shot two male models together, I didn't want the bromance, I wanted them to be two individual people. We wanted to give men the space they deserve in vanity.

Your collection is called Mhaaro, which means ‘mine’. What does personal jewellery mean to you?

SS: Personal jewellery is memory, emotion, passing something down to the next generation. Mhaaro is a very common word in Rajasthan. It means ‘mine’, ‘my very own’. Niharika picked this name.

Niharika Shekhawat (NS): It is possession but without arrogance. My Nani used to use it a lot. It’s affectionate, emotional, it adds a little bit of pride to love.

Is that how you feel about your personal jewellery as well?

NS: Yes, we wouldn’t barter it for anything.

SS: Not the craft or the concept but we would want to share the emotion. Everyone should have the same feeling when they are buying it.

NS: We’ve never really shot men’s jewellery before, we’ve never created it. It was always an accidental way of men coming and buying it. The only person I think of dressing up is my brother, Digvijay. My father is too old to listen. Digvijay is second generation in business, so he has to listen. He has been my muse for the longest time. I also have a six-month-old son, and I’ve already started collecting jewellery for him. My first question for the doctor was not about his food, it was about when I could pierce his ear. There are pieces from our family vault that I’ve always admired, and those made it into the collection. Digvijay was in my mind a lot when we were picking the pieces.

SS: My grandson who is just six months old, has about four of five beautiful pocket pins.

NS: He can wear Fab India but jewellery is non-negotiable.

Weddings are such a huge market in a country like India. Do you think this collection will change how Indian grooms think about jewellery?

NS: One hundred percent. We do a lot of millionaire weddings which are completely off the gram. We just did one in Morocco right now. More than women, we did men’s jewellery. What do you gift a successful man who has everything? They have the best watches and tailor made clothes but it is jewellery that becomes the taste maker’s delight. If someone has to buy a luxury watch, of course it’s going to be tasteful and I’m not disregarding that but it becomes an obvious choice. Unlike that a bespoke piece of jewellery becomes the most nuanced gift. Indian craftsmanship offers something deeply personal and timeless. Jewellery is one of the most meaningful wedding gifts. If anyone wants to pamper their son-in-law, they should come to us.

Do you think craftsmanship is luxury today?

NS: We see so much luxury today in magazines and shows but it doesn’t always feel like luxury. Not everything that is handmade is luxury.

SS: You make rotis with your hands too, that’s not luxury.

NS: People often misconstrue handmade for luxury. Now there’s also a difference between craft and art. Jewellery is a very nuanced subject, it’s craftsmanship and precision in detail.

SS: And the canvas is so small in jewellery. It’s not like we’re working with yards and yards of material. Jewellery is one thing that lasts for generations, it’s not like clothes which will last you about twenty thirty years at the most.

NS: Luxury is the touch, feel and tangibility. Even the finesse and details. If I had to put it simply, if you buy a piece of jewellery and it’s not getting stuck in your chiffon saree, that’s luxury for me. It all boils down to detail and finishing.

The sarpech, jigha, and turra once belonged to royalty and signalled rank. What responsibility comes in as a jeweller reworking symbols of such power and history?

NS: It’s about patronage. History is the best answer for the present. There’s fear that you don’t want to get it wrong but that fear also pushes you. When we work with such pieces, we’re creating the way forward for patronage to look back and see the history of our country and who we are. My brother and I are second generation. This work gives us hope that there’s so much more to our country and that our careers are AI-proof. There’s so much scope by touching even the tiniest parts of history and creating patronage, awareness and luxury. Craft originated with the idea of taking patronage ahead. With some luxury brands in India, it's often read as emulating. But I look at it as patronage when we work with museum pieces.

What kind of man do you see wearing these pieces today?

NS: Anybody who likes to wear India on his sleeve like he would wear his heart on his sleeve. People who celebrate their roots. You don’t need to wear a sari and walk down Manhattan to be Indian today, you could just be wearing a Raw Mango drape. Same applies for jewellery. You can wear a simple piece with a black bandhgala at the Grammys. That’s patriotism too. This is how you carry a little piece of India with you. That’s our language of patriotism.