It Started With a Stone

There are certain things you grow up knowing without being told. In Anaita Thakkar's case, one of those things was that jewellery meant gold. Fine gemstones. The good stuff, saved for the right occasion, worn with appropriate gravity. Silver was for students. Semi-precious stones were for people who couldn't afford the real thing.

She disagreed. Not loudly, not as a statement, just consistently, in the way that some people quietly refuse to follow a rule that never made sense to them. She wore what she loved, and what she loved was silver and gemstones, the colour and character of them, the way each stone was different from the next.

That instinct followed her out of Mumbai, through a decade working in Hong Kong, and eventually to Singapore, where she moved when she got married. Singapore suited her, though not in the way she expected. The first years were full. She trained as a Montessori teacher, had and raised her children, worked in relocation, and started a graphic digital portrait business at a time when that kind of work required actual skill 

rather than a filter and thirty seconds. She has never been someone who sits still, and Singapore, to its credit, gave her enough room to keep moving.

The idea for Lustre came from a holiday. A family trip to Sri Lanka, some time spent sourcing stones, a few pieces made while she was there. When she came back to Singapore, she started paying attention. There were people making beautiful fine jewellery at the top end of the market. There were people importing crystal and cubic zirconia from China and Korea and marking it up significantly. But nobody was occupying the space in between: natural gemstones, genuinely handcrafted, at a price point that didn't require a special occasion to justify.

That was the gap. And once she saw it, she couldn't unsee it.

Lustre launched as a collaboration, grew into a full time operation, and by 2014 Anaita had bought it over entirely. The brief she set herself then is the same one she works to now: ethically sourced natural gemstones, handcrafted by skilled artisans in ateliers around the world, designed to be worn and loved rather than saved for someday. Affordable luxury, in the truest sense of that phrase. Not a compromise. Not an imitation. The real thing, done properly.

More than a decade in, the collections have grown and the reach has gone global. The stones are still natural. The craft still matters. And the disagreement that started it all, that quiet refusal to accept that beautiful jewellery had to be either unaffordable or fake, is still very much the point.

"It's all in the details. Do it right, or not at all."