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Milan Chokshi’s trajectory is emblematic of how this band of designers has evolved. In the 1990s, Chokshi, founder of the Mumbai-based fine-jewelry brand Moksh, spent time in Carlsbad, Calif., studying at the Gemological Institute of America. He then worked for his family’s jewelry company—which had a distribution network from Belgium to Bangkok—producing inexpensive items for American retailers such as JCPenney and Sam’s Club as well as diamond-set pieces for the Indian domestic market. In 2004, he came to a realization that prompted him to open his own by-appointment salon on Mumbai’s Hughes Road, where he began offering high-end designs that reflected his Indian heritage as well as his global perspective.
“I grew up in the ’90s, so I was exposed to a changing environment globally, and I thought there were enough people like me who wanted a different retail experience and a different kind of product when they went out shopping for luxury, especially jewelry, in India,” Chokshi says on a recent video call from his home in Mumbai. “And that was the start.”
At the time, Indian consumers’ tastes in jewelry were more rooted in the West, he explains. “When I started this business, the tendency was for a woman to come in with a magazine showing an international brand and say, ‘I want to make this,’ ” he recalls. “And that stemmed from an inherent subservient mindset to a colonial past where they were brought up thinking that everything that is international is of better quality.”
