The Story Behind ANJNA London.
By: Anjna Kaur
There is something slightly surreal about writing about your own brand. Usually, when I sit down to write, I am looking outward: at fashion, at the way we are dressing, at the trends shaping a season or the small details that suddenly seem to be everywhere. This time, I wanted to turn that lens towards something much more personal: ANJNA London.
I founded ANJNA at the end of 2025, but the idea behind it had been forming long before I knew exactly what it would become. I have always loved jewellery, but more specifically, I have always loved what jewellery can do. I have never really seen it as something you add at the very end of getting dressed. For me, it is often the part that makes everything else make sense. A simple black dress feels completely different once you layer gold necklaces over it. A white shirt changes with the right earrings. The rings, bracelets and necklaces I choose can completely shift how I feel in something I have worn countless times before.
Over time, I became increasingly interested in that relationship between jewellery, fashion and the person wearing it. I didn't want jewellery to feel like something reserved for special occasions or kept safely in a box. I wanted pieces that became part of the way you dressed and, eventually, part of you.
That idea would ultimately become ANJNA. Before launching the brand, I studied Jewellery Design and CAD/CAM at GIA London. It was there that an idea which had lived largely in my head became something tangible. I learnt how to take a sketch and think about it three-dimensionally: how a piece would sit against the body, how a stone would be held, how a curve would look from every angle. One of the designs I created during that period won the GIA Design Award. It would later become SURIYA, one of ANJNA's signature rings.
That moment gave me confidence in the design language I was developing, but I knew I wanted the eventual brand to stand for more than beautiful objects.
THE PHRASE I KEPT RETURNING TO WAS “JEWELLERY AS A RITUAL.”
Getting dressed has always felt ritualistic to me. I can wear the simplest black dress or white shirt, but it doesn't quite feel like me until I have added jewellery. I layer necklaces, choose rings depending on my mood, add bracelets, change earrings and, somewhere in that process, the outfit becomes mine.
That is the idea at the centre of ANJNA. Jewellery isn't necessarily the finishing touch. Sometimes, it is the starting point. ANJNA launched in December 2025 with our first collection, AWAKENED. Designed by me in London and handcrafted in Thailand, the collection introduced the codes that I wanted the brand to become known for: sculptural forms, natural gemstones, symbolism and pieces that felt distinctive while remaining wearable.
My Indian roots and Thai heritage naturally found their way into the collection, sometimes visibly and sometimes simply through the way I approached meaning. Even the names carried significance. SURIYA means “sun” in Thai, while JYOTSNA translates to “moonlight” in Sanskrit. The gemstones were similarly intentional. White Topaz represented clarity, Blue Topaz alignment, Pink Quartz grace, while freshwater pearls became associated with calm and balance.
But launching ANJNA taught me that the most interesting part of designing jewellery begins after you release it. You start seeing how other people interpret it. A necklace I had imagined worn one way would be layered completely differently by someone else. Rings would be stacked in combinations I hadn't considered. Pieces became part of wardrobes, evenings, birthdays, events and everyday routines that had nothing to do with me anymore.
THAT IDEA BECAME THE STARTING POINT FOR OUR SECOND COLLECTION: EMBODIED.
If AWAKENED was about introducing the world of ANJNA, EMBODIED was about pushing that world further. The collection began with one question: what happens when jewellery stops simply sitting on the body and starts interacting with it?
The phrase behind the collection became “Not worn. Embodied.” With EMBODIED, I became increasingly interested in jewellery as architecture. I wanted to think about the body almost as a canvas and design pieces around movement, form and the relationship between jewellery and clothing. This is perhaps clearest in SUTRA, our Ritual Strap. SUTRA is not a conventional necklace or bracelet. Designed with detachable swan hooks, it attaches across the body and turns jewellery into part of the silhouette of an outfit. It blurs the boundary between jewellery and fashion, which is something I have always been fascinated by.
When does a piece of jewellery become part of the clothing itself? That question runs throughout EMBODIED. The SANA bracelet takes the idea in a different direction. Its brushed metal form wraps around the wrist almost like a piece of sculpture, with different cuts of White Topaz paired with yellow, white and rose gold tones. The ISHA necklace similarly focuses on sculptural links, designed to sit around the neck with a sense of weight and movement.
THEN THERE IS BLOOM.
BLOOM introduced Green Topaz into the ANJNA world through some of our most recognisable silhouettes, including SURIYA, JYOTSNA and DARA. Green Topaz became symbolic of growth, renewal, abundance and new beginnings, meanings that felt particularly appropriate for the second chapter of a young brand.
There is a certain vulnerability in launching something you have designed yourself. For months, you obsess over millimetres, stone shapes, finishes and proportions. You see prototypes that nobody else sees. You change details that most people would probably never notice. Then, suddenly, the piece belongs to the public.
Over the past nine months, I have watched ANJNA leave the world I created for it and enter other people's.
Pieces have appeared on red carpets, at fashion events, in editorials and, most importantly, in the everyday lives of our customers. Seeing women such as Jorja Smith and Isla Fisher wearing designs I once stared at on a CAD screen is still incredibly strange to comprehend. Equally special is seeing a customer wearing one of our pieces in her own way.
Because ultimately, that is what ANJNA was created for. I don't want jewellery to feel precious in the sense that it has to be saved. I want it to be worn. Layered. Mixed. Taken on holiday. Worn to dinner. Thrown on with a white shirt. Put on every morning without thinking until, eventually, reaching for it becomes instinctive.
A ritual. EMBODIED feels like the clearest expression of that philosophy so far because it asks the wearer to participate. The pieces don't dictate an entire look. They become part of the person wearing them. Building ANJNA has also changed the way I look at fashion more broadly. As a designer, you become hyper-aware of the difference between creating an image and creating something that actually becomes part of someone's life. Fashion moves extraordinarily quickly, but the objects we form emotional attachments to often move in the opposite direction. We keep them. That, to me, is the power of jewellery. I am still at the very beginning of building ANJNA. The brand isn't even a year old, and there are so many ideas I haven't explored yet. But when I look from AWAKENED to EMBODIED, I can already see its language becoming clearer.
It is a brand rooted in my heritage but not confined by it. Designed in London and crafted in Thailand. Interested in symbolism but equally interested in how something looks with a great dress at 8pm. Somewhere between jewellery and fashion, sentiment and styling, permanence and play. And perhaps that is what “Jewellery as a Ritual” has come to mean to me. It isn't about jewellery being reserved for significant moments. It is about making jewellery significant through the simple act of wearing it.
