Palash Kothari, Director, Manika Gold, talks about launching Foura, a brand that brings exclusive, high-end designs in gold studded with cubic zirconia at IIJS Bharat Premiere. Inspired by stalwarts like JAR and Cindy Chao, Foura aims to use pavé-set zirconia to create a painterly effect.
Tell us about Manika Gold. What kind of jewellery do you specialise in?
The CZ jewellery market, particularly on the B2B side, is very price sensitive. But we saw a section of buyers who had grown tired of mass produced, generic designs and were willing to pay a little more for something better made. That gap is what Manika Gold was built around. The company is run by Vishal Jain, Deepam Kothari and myself. Vishal and Deepam handle sales and design, while I look into production, research, and development.
Our main line, Rija, focuses on accessible, lightweight occasion wear, made with the finish and workmanship you would expect from fine jewellery. For this show, we are launching Foura, which brings couture design sensibilities into CZ jewellery.
Why did you decide to launch Foura Jewels?
After seven years of building Rija, we realised how much more we could do if we let go of the constraints of the wastage wars. If every decision is influenced by a specific price point, we tend to work backwards from that number. The idea for Foura came from us asking what we would make if that wasn’t the primary concern. It started as a test of how far we could push ourselves, and it is built so that we can keep pushing every season.
What kind of jewellery will Foura focus on?
The first Foura collection is held together by themes rather than a single narrative. The forms are intricate and detailed. Nothing has been simplified to speed up production. Dense pavé carries a lot of design. We’ve spent a lot of time figuring out ombres that work well. We looked closely at how JAR and Cindy Chao use pavé, where it reads as one continuous surface rather than a scatter of individual stones. We’re also working with carved wood and titanium, with more techniques in the pipeline. The first collection will tell us what buyers respond to and what they don’t, and that shapes where Foura goes next.
What inspires your creations?
Designing for a market and designing to express yourself are two very different things. We try to stay objective about it and rely on data and decide that way. We also spend a lot of time studying master jewellery houses and try and find ways to adapt their thinking for the Indian market. Instead of just screenshotting designs, the valuable part is learning how they solve problems: how a piece is articulated so it sits right, how they space prongs, how they get scale without adding weight… We also focus a lot on getting our proportions right.