D'ORIGIN MAGAZINE, AUG-SEPT ISSUE 2026
By Smitha Sadanandan
Sanah Khurana’s grandmother was a school principal who marked every milestone in her life with a piece of jewelry – she rewarded herself with jewelry whether for a promotion, an achievement, or even her retirement. She bought these pieces intending to pass them down to the women and girls in the family. Khurana recalls her grandmother buying a chic tennis bracelet, a piece quite unlike what many women her grandmother’s age would have worn back in the day. “She was someone who loved expressing herself through jewelry,” she recalls. “And I was very close to her.” That layered relationship sparked something in Khurana and resurfaced years later as Tripat, a jewelry brand named after her grandmother.
Khurana grew up in New Delhi, India, and studied knitwear design at NIFT during 2009-2013. “I was a graduate gold medalist and remember receiving the award from Ritu Kumar,” she says of the pioneering designer who revived traditional Indian embroidery and printing techniques. Projects with Fashion Design Council of India (FDCI) and Anthropologie kept Khurana busy until she moved to Paris in 2016 for her Master’s Degree in Luxury Brand Management at the International Fashion Academy. Internships during the Paris Fashion Week –working closely with Indian brands to land retailers – enabled the designer to hone her skills and strengthen her network.
Later, she moved to Amsterdam. It was her job with Dutch jewellery designer Bibi van der Velden, in 2020, that reignited what Khurana describes as a “deep, inherited love.” “Working with Bibi made me realize just how much I love this industry and the craft of jewellery making,” shares Khurana. When she finally felt ready – armed with industry experience spanning Anthropologie, the FDCI, and years of product and operations work – she launched Tripat in the Fall of 2025. The founding impulse, she shares, was personal.
After her grandmother passed, Khurana inherited a significant collection that included a stack of Meenakari bangles, earrings, and a neckpiece, a polki set, and pearl and polki jewelry. “My mom and aunt, too, were handed down a fair share of the jewels.” Beautiful, emotionally weighted, and almost entirely unworn, these pieces were always kept in a locker. “The only occasions I have to wear them are weddings or festivities, or occasionally pairing them with Indian outfits,” she recalls. “I don’t want my future generation to inherit pieces that they would hardly wear.” The solution, for her, was to take the emotional core of that inherited jewelry and translate it into something wearable every day; pieces that carry memory without demanding occasion.
That philosophy shaped Tripat and its four core collections: Nostalgia, Flora, Fauna and Cosmic, each a different interpretation of the designer’s own world. The Nostalgia collection, which draws on specific cultural memories of a ghungroo pendant, is inspired by the ankle ornament worn by classical Indian dancers, and contains a loose pearl or malachite stone inside its petite cage – an echo of the sound and spirit of the original. A Shankh charm, inspired by a conch shell, traces back to Durga Puja, a beloved festival of Bengal dedicated to the Goddess Durga. “It’s my memory of that puja and its celebrations in Delhi,” she shares. “And I wanted to translate that memory into a charm.” Being a new designer on the block, she typically makes half a dozen pieces for each line, expanding the offering over time.