When jewellery eats clothes

A bustier made not of silk or satin but plated in 24-carat gold. A skeletal dress that glints like armour, its lattice of metal wrapping the body more like couture than ornament. This is where jewellery has landed in 2025: no longer just hanging from the ears or draping the collarbone, it’s climbing onto the torso, taking over the body, and threatening to eat clothes whole.

Jewellery brands like Misho and Outhouse aren’t just making accessories anymore but gilded pieces that function as outfits. Their recent collections, from the former’s first attempt at bridal couture to the latter’s ‘Alchemy of 13’ line, signal a shift in the role of jewellery: from embellishment to centrepiece, where metal is no longer the finishing touch but the starting point.

“We have always seen jewellery as artefacts, objects that transcend adornment. With the runway show, we wanted to explore what happens when jewellery is no longer confined to its traditional scale,” say Kaabia and Sasha Grewal, the sisters behind Outhouse. For the runway show in Mumbai last month to mark the brand’s 13th anniversary, the duo put out conical bralettes, a skeletal waspie, and a ‘naked’ dress, all crafted in 22-carat-gold-plated metal. “Each piece was conceived as jewellery in its purest sense but expanded to embrace the body as a whole. It was about erasing the boundaries between object and garment and creating pieces that felt sculptural, surreal, and alive.”

For Suhani Parekh, the founder of Misho, the shift to making bigger pieces that take up more of the body’s real estate was inevitable. “I’ve never seen myself as a jewellery designer. I trained as a sculptor, and jewellery just became the medium of the moment. But right from the onset, it was never about just jewellery; it was also about design,” Parekh says. The multidisciplinary artist has been experimenting with body pieces ever since she launched her brand in 2016. In 2023, she wore a Misho breastplate and belly armour to the opening gala of the Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre while pregnant. “It was nice to go back to playing with larger forms, to bring that element of scale back into our practice. Our technique and mastery of material have also evolved with time, so I wanted to explore more and tell a larger story.”

Misho’s bridal couture collection—which draws from the one-off bustiers and corsets they’ve created over the past two years for Beyoncé, Bridgerton star Nicola Coughlan, and other private clients—is made up of five body pieces that can be paired with lehengas or skirts. The styles include the Peacock and the Panther that, naturally, feature animal-inspired motifs; Memento, a corset that can be customised to depict a personal story; an asymmetrical, drape-like bustier; and a lacquered version with a plunging neckline.

While what Misho and Outhouse are doing feels radical, it isn’t without precedent. Jewellery maisons have long experimented with pieces that have slipped into the role of clothing. Elsa Peretti’s gold mesh bra for Tiffany in the ’70s made its way back into headlines when Zoë Kravitz wore it to an Oscars after-party in 2019. Cartier dressed Zoë Saldana in its Tressage cape accented with diamonds and onyx pendants on the 2023 Cannes red carpet, while Beyoncé closed her Renaissance World Tour in a Tiffany minidress made entirely of diamond strands.

Meanwhile, fashion designers haven’t been able to resist trespassing into the territory of jewellery either. Paco Rabanne earned the moniker the “metallurgist of fashion” with his first haute couture collection in 1966 titled, ‘Twelve Unwearable Dresses in Contemporary Materials’, where dresses were made of rectangular aluminum discs and plates joined with metal rings.

And who can forget Alexander McQueen’s collaboration with jeweller Shaun Leane? Together, they forged pieces like the Spine corset, the aluminum Coil corset, the Swarovski crystal-studded yashmak, the Rose corset (Givenchy haute couture 2000)—objects that were neither jewellery nor clothing yet somehow both. Meanwhile, at Schiaparelli, Daniel Roseberry has made jewel-like pieces central to his couture vocabulary. Remember the anatomical ‘lung’ necklace, or the golden top made entirely of sculpted blossoms from 2021? This year, one of the standout pieces from Sarah Burton’s Givenchy debut in March was a glittering vest composed of oversized crystals and pearls, which was worn by Jenna Ortega at the Emmys last week.

The temptation to blur the line between jewellery and fashion clearly isn’t new. The difference now? Indian designers like Misho and Outhouse aren’t doing one-off spectacle pieces—they’re building entire collections on the idea that jewellery can replace clothes and putting it at the centre of their brands.

Of course, it’s not as simple as stringing a pearl of beads. It’s taken Parekh and her in-house craftsmen almost a decade to evolve those crude skeletons into the smooth, sculpted body pieces they offer today. “My early corsets were all wire-based because that was the material I could work with fresh out of university,” she says of the early pieces that created outlines on the body. “The bodices we make now are really a culmination of 10 years of experimenting with casting techniques—sand casting, lost wax—and mastering the medium of metal.” It’s a journey that has also required expanding her team, including tailors for lining the bodices and creating her jewel-studded lehengas, and resulted in the creation of the Andromeda body piece, a corset crafted in solid 18-carat white gold set with 5,000 natural diamonds.

Outhouse, similarly, collaborated with artisans skilled in jewellery-making and metal engineering to ensure their pieces embrace the body comfortably. “It is no longer about a clasp or a hinge but about weight distribution, ergonomics, and fluidity of movement,” they explain. “We had to work with artisans skilled in both jewellery-making and metal engineering to blend the finesse of miniature craftsmanship with the architecture of wearable sculpture.”

Who is wearing these jewellery-clothing hybrids? “They are for the fearless,” say the Grewal sisters. “The woman who sees her body as a canvas and her jewellery as armour. She is unafraid of being seen, and even more unafraid of being remembered.” These pieces are not for the everyday; they’re to be worn on red carpets, for performances, or, of course, at weddings. “When you’re a bride, it’s that one moment when you want to wear something truly yours. These pieces are personal and custom-fit to the body,” says Parikh. At her Mumbai atelier, clients try samples, test silhouettes, and can even engrave their love stories into metal.

Both houses are thinking ahead about what jewellery-as-outfit might evolve into. “It doesn’t have to be a solid metal lehenga—that would just be impractical,” Parikh laughs. Instead, she’s thinking more about how her sculptural language can infiltrate textiles. “We’ve embellished our lehengas with rubies using a special moti-making technique that’s used in jewellery but which we’re now using for embroidery.” For Outhouse, it’s about scalability. “Today, it’s about spectacular one-of-a-kind pieces; tomorrow, it might be about modular elements that bring the same audacity into everyday life.” Modular pieces like the Koko lapel collar and Koko Sigil pin belt are already available to shop on their webstore. Other larger pieces that aren’t listed can be commissioned by clients privately.

So, what does this mean for the relationship between jewellery and clothing? Perhaps it is time to stop seeing them as distinct categories entirely. Instead, they form a continuum of what’s wearable. What was an add-on has become outfit. Jewellery now, much like clothing, dresses the body. And in doing so, it reshapes it.