The Line’s founder on being a minimalist designer in a world of maximalists

For designer Natasha Khurana, founder of jewellery label The Line, it always starts with a gemstone. “Mostly, the gems tell me where they belong,” says Khurana as we chat over Zoom on a Friday afternoon. “I hate playing games. I’m very direct with what I say. It’s the same with stones. What is the bare minimum I can do? Or, how can I let this ruby speak for itself, and what does it want to say?”

Her latest collection, titled ‘Homecoming’, which also marks 10 years of the brand, is an instance of what happens when that voice is given free reign. Like everything Khurana makes, the earrings and necklaces are perfect for everyday wear, yet this time the palette is full of joyful juxtapositions. Like a jade-green chrysoprase drop topped with a candy-pink opal and a pearl, or a spotted Dalmation jasper that’s the pinnacle on an emerald dot and large black onyx. Yet while they might be more colourful, the pieces retain a sense of restraint that has become a signature of The Line.

The designer was born and raised in New Delhi and is now based in Dubai, both cities where opulence is celebrated in many ways—in jewellery, in fashion, even in architecture and interior design. She worked as a fashion journalist for many years, writing for Elle and then Harper’s Bazaar, before launching her fine jewellery line in 2015. “I was just turning 30 and it was around the time that the conversation in fashion had shifted a bit towards forever pieces. I was realising that I had entered a different phase in my life and that I now wanted things to last. Things like fabric, material, and craft had become more important,” she says from her studio in Dubai.

At that time, fashion brands like Bodice, Lovebirds, and The Summer House, now Khurana’s own go-to labels, had just launched, offering a fresh, contemporary vision of what made-in-India fashion could look like. These designers were thinking of what women needed to wear to work, to play, to be at home with the kids or while on holiday in London. They offered an alternative to the duality that seemed to divide Indian fashion (and jewellery)—between clothes that cater to the big Indian wedding or the festive market, and the mass-produced, mass-manufactured stuff designed for export.

Khurana toyed with the idea of starting her own costume jewellery line and even reached a stage where she was ready to launch her first collection before realising that she wished for something that bridged the space between “costume jewellery’s style and fine jewellery’s longevity”. Like the perfect throw-on-and-go dress from Bodice, she wanted to create pieces that straddled both beauty and utility.

The first piece she designed was a sculpted gold ring inspired by impeccably dressed older women she saw on the streets of Paris one holiday. “They would have, like, really nice nails, wear a little bit of a heel, carry a great handbag. And just one thick slash of gold on a finger,” she recalls.

The ring was followed by a set of pearl earrings; dainty, crescent-shaped pavé-set diamond pendants and studs; and eternity bands set with baguette-cut rubies. These pieces, even 10 years later, remain some of her bestsellers and have garnered her celebrity clients like Deepika Padukone (she wears her hoops from The Line on repeat), Alia Bhatt, and Mira Kapoor.

“The reason I don’t need to do very much is because my gemstone sourcing is so strong,” she reveals. “I started The Line to bring those high-quality gems into the fold of the everyday.” Naturally, that means Khurana is a purist when it comes to her gemstones, using only the finest Akoya and South Sea pearls (as opposed to resin or freshwater pearls), emeralds from Zambia, rubies from Mozambique, and natural diamonds (don’t get her started on lab-grown diamonds). She trained her eye over time and with the help of her husband, Nimit Kapur, who is a fifth-generation jeweller. Eventually, she could identify the hallmarks of a good stone, looking for things like colour and saturation but also lustre (“if it has no lustre, in Hindi we say that it’s bandh, or closed, like there’s no light going through it”) and sparkle.

But that’s not to say that Khurana doesn’t create jewellery that’s fanciful and fun. Her ‘Songbird’ collection, released in 2023 in collaboration with Gemfields, includes delicate pearl-strung chokers, a ear cuff made of rose-cut diamonds and emeralds, and her take on the chandbali—all pieces fit for a wedding guest. The ‘Bahaar’ line from the same year arranges sapphires and tourmalines in a rainbow of colours for whimsical necklaces, bracelets, and rings. “The only difference is that I might not set things in a fancy way. A gem doesn’t need to have a diamond halo around it, for example,” she says.

‘Homecoming’ was all about joy. It was born over the summer in Delhi, as the season shifted to monsoon and just as Khurana started learning Hindustani classical music. The result is a pair of Tahiti pearl danglers whose stormy grey stones mimic a cloudy sky. Or delicious lemon quartz and opal earrings whose bright yellow hue, she says, reminded her of amaltas flowers on a hot summer day. “It was a very poetic phase. The monsoon just inspires you so much, and everywhere the colours seem brighter. I always say that somehow the seasons of Delhi are coded in my body.”

In today’s market, where minimalism seems to be a shorthand for things like ‘quiet luxury’ or Scandi style—cue much-duped pieces like the Alaïa mesh slippers or the Bottega drop earrings—I ask her if there is room for self-expression within that school of thought. She defers to the women who wear her jewellery as examples, like PR consultant Srimoyi Bhattacharya and stylist Malini Banerjee, whom she describes as “extremely eclectic, definitely not minimalist”, adding, “But when they wear my pieces, they wear them their own way.” Hers is an aesthetic rooted in paring back. “Minimalism to me is succinctness and restraint, two qualities that I think of as a flex in a world of muchness.”