By Shailesh Ramani, Managing Director, GURUKRUPA EXPORT
For generations, the mangalsutra has carried some of the deepest emotional weight of any piece in Indian jewellery. Its design, however, has moved more slowly than the culture around it: for decades, brides were largely offered one fixed idea of the mangalsutra, worn out of ceremony rather than choice.
That is changing. Today’s bride is asking for something she will keep wearing well after the wedding: lighter everyday styles, detachable pendants, layered silhouettes and settings that read as jewellery first without losing the symbolism. Because bridal preferences vary sharply by region, a design that works in Tamil Nadu does not necessarily translate to Gujarat, Maharashtra, Rajasthan or West Bengal, and manufacturers are increasingly expected to design for that variation rather than around it.
“Today’s bride wants versatility without compromising on tradition,” says Shailesh Ramani, Managing Director of GuruKrupa Export, a Surat-founded diamond and gold jewellery manufacturer now in its third generation. “She wants a mangalsutra that can accompany her from the wedding mandap to her everyday life.”
That kind of shift shows up on the retail counter, but it is built well before it, inside manufacturing operations most consumers never see. GuruKrupa Export, in business for more than six decades, says its roughly 2,000-person production and design workforce works off regional buying patterns and retailer feedback rather than a single national template, supplying more than 400 jewellery brands and retailers across India, with its strongest presence in the south.
At IIJS Premiere this year, the company is presenting Amrut Bandhan, a new mangalsutra collection of more than 1,000 designs built around that regional-first approach, alongside its existing lightweight and festive-season ranges.
“Our responsibility extends far beyond manufacturing jewellery,” Ramani says. “Every retailer who chooses us places their reputation in our hands, and that is a responsibility we take very seriously.”
As bridal buying continues to shift toward everyday wearability, the mangalsutra’s evolution is likely to keep tracking it: less a single design fixed by tradition, more a category being reshaped region by region, generation by generation.
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