Smita Diwan
Are you ready to add new creative women to your imaginary bestie list? Aanchal Rathee and Sanjana Bhuwalka are the most creative women we have interviewed. They are brilliant in curating fashion,design sense and creating personal brands. Now, let’s learn all about our new techie Curators.
As a Personal brand and style consultant, Aanchal Rathee established a practice in India and Singapore. She believes the process of identifying and creating ones’ personal brand is a vital tool for achieving success not only in professional but also personal and social life. Over the years, she got an opportunity to work with clients from corporate to entertainment to independent professionals to homemakers. Now, she is excited to use her experience in Fashion & Styling at Cult Curators.
Sanjana Bhuwalka has a Bachelor’s degree in Business Management and a vast experience in the retail business. She’s run a fashion clothing studio for 3 years, a post which she ran a precious jewellery showroom and retail business for 5 years. She delights in discovering designers and artists and is often awed by design in its simplicity and its complexity. Having grown up among artists, she has a great love and respect for the creative process.
1) When did you first realize you love to make?
We are curators per say. We discover designers and work with them to fine tune their collection for the Indian Market.
2)What inspired us to start this brand?
One morning over breakfast ( 8th Jan, 2016 ), my dear friend – a pregnant-second-time, free-spirited, independent, strong, personal branding consultant Aanchal, dividing her time between Singapore-Mumbai and I – a stay at home, book and tv obsessed, fashion loving, organic, mom to a special needs child and an equally strong sibling, chatted casually about how dissatisfied we were by the accessory scene in India. It seemed that neither of us was able to find the correct combination of contemporary, bold, eclectic jewellery which was also elegant and well finished.
” Cult Curators” was thus born, with a vision to offer fashion jewellery with fun and finesse. We foresee a destination for beautiful contemporary jewellery design and a library of some of the most renowned jewellery artists in the world.
3)What’s the inspiration behind the name?
The name process was really interesting, we shortlisted a bunch of unique names and went back and forth on it till we found the perfect one we could sleep with. We wanted it to signify a certain strength and boldness….we think the name represents us accurately.
4)How do you come up with your designs? Where do you get your inspiration? How do you pick and choose your designers ?
The unique approach is what we look for – it could be in terms of approach towards design, the materials used, or a story that a piece may depict and of course the fact that they are all lovingly handmade by the designers. For e.g. Emma Ware makes these beautifully fluid pieces from recycled rubber and industrial metal, Michal Tahalev weaves metal and cloth and acrylics together on a hand-operated loom such that you have a ready to wear piece come out, Kalina Filcheva revives traditional neo-ethnic jewellery making. Each piece has a stunning design factor and each designer has a story.
5)Which design are you proudest of?
This One is tricky because we love all our pieces. 🙂
If we have to say one we would say “Maison 203″. Each of these Italian designed pieces are simply stunning…they define our brand to the T. They are bold, adventurous and of excellent quality. They also come out of a unique approach – 3D printing. These pieces are all are also shocking weightless…you can’t tell you’re wearing a piece of jewellery.
6)How has technology changed and supported what you do ?
Technology has been a game changer for us. Visualise this – Aanchal is in Singapore, I’m in Mumbai. We have an idea on the 8th of January, 2016 over breakfast in Mumbai. Aanchal returns to Singapore and we continue to chat over WhatsApp or exchange emails to streamline the plan. We are able to make a business plan, fine tune it, begin it’s implementation and finally launch our very own website, complete with inventory and logistics in place on the 26th of February, 2016.
If it wasn’t for technology and a great partnership, we don’t think this journey from IDEA to LAUNCH could have been possible in FLAT 50 DAYS ! And we did everything from scratch by ourselves.
AANCHAL- “In fact many of my Business School friends were really amazed and they were very keen to find out what we did and how we went about things considering we apparently did it in this record time”.
7)What is the price range of your collection?
The price range of the collection starts from Rs. 2000/- onwards.
So ladies you can shop for yourself or your bestie straight from their website. There are so many adorbs designs to choose from. Just get ready to feed your jewellery addiction!
