There is a point where jewellery stops behaving like ornament and starts asking to be read. New York-based label Eskae (@eskae.atelier ) sits in that space, creating sculptural pieces that challenge the polite expectations of modern jewellery. “I was inspired to start ESKAE by a desire to create jewellery that holds meaning beyond adornment… ESKAE is a play on the suffix ‘esque’, suggesting the essence of something rather than a fixed definition. I wanted to build a brand that feels like a state of being rather than a label, something that invites interpretation,” says founder Drishti Verma (@drishtivermaa ).
Born in India and now based in New York City, Verma works between two cultural registers. India’s layered traditions and New York’s global landscape have shaped her understanding of “form, meaning and universality and how intimate belief systems can be shared and understood across different contexts.” In her work, that duality appears through contrast: structure and fluidity, restraint and expression, silence and intensity.
Drawing from mythology, philosophy and psychology, Eskae is anchored in what Verma calls the “unspoken”: emotional states that exist before language. The result is jewellery that feels sculptural, intimate and alive.
The Cannes Film Festival is one of the world’s most prestigious platforms for cinema.
For Indian women, however, the red carpet has repeatedly become a site of public trial.
Each year, the conversation loses the plot. Craft gives way to commentary. Presence gives way to appearance. Fashion policing becomes the main event, even though it sits miles away from what the festival is meant to celebrate.
The scrutiny around Alia Bhatt (@aliaabhatt ) on Instagram this year is only the latest reminder of a familiar pattern: Indian women on global stages are repeatedly reduced to targets of online hostility.
This is hardly new. Aishwarya Rai’s outfits, Deepika Padukone’s make-up, and now Alia Bhatt’s red carpet presence have all been dissected with a force rarely reserved for the work itself. Their films, achievements and place in Indian representation are pushed to the margins.
What repeats is not the moment. It is the mechanism.
Read more at the link in bio
In India, guilt has rarely been just a feeling. It sits inside silence, duty, family expectation, internalised shame and the promise of karmic correction.
Now it has another life online. A post, a reshare, a hashtag or the right therapy-speak can start to look like social accountability. Sometimes it is care. Sometimes it is performance. Often, it is both.
Privilege still decides who gets to look away. Women and marginalised groups are often left carrying the heaviest moral burden, while Gen Z is learning to draw boundaries and inherit a new guilt through visibility, outrage and the pressure to post.
What guilt reveals is less about goodness and more about power.
Read more at the link in bio.
By Karishma Kuenzang (@kkuenzang )
#GuiltInIndia #InternalisedGuilt #SocialAccountability #FamilyBoundaries #performativeactivism
Favre Leuba’s revival begins where serious watchmaking often does: in the archive.
Founded in 1737, the maison’s record runs from frontier instruments to formal complications. In 1962, it launched the Bivouac, the first mechanical watch with an aneroid barometer. In 1968 came the Bathy, the first mechanical watch with a depth gauge. Altitude, depth and expedition were not decorative ideas for the brand. They were functions.
That is why its Watches and Wonders Geneva 2026 debut matters beyond the fair calendar. Less than two years after its 2024 revival, Favre Leuba entered the conversation with two watches drawn from its own past: the Harpoon Revival and the 1737 Triple Calendar.
The archive also sits close to high watchmaking. Favre Leuba’s name has appeared on dials alongside Patek Philippe, Zenith, IWC and Jaeger-LeCoultre, including the Calatrava by Patek Philippe. In 1948, the maison also acquired Bovet’s name and manufacturing facilities, producing high-precision chronographs under the Favre Leuba Bovet name.
For India, the story runs deeper. Favre Leuba became the first Swiss watch brand to enter the country in 1865, with its first Indian store opening in Bombay. A Zenith and Favre Leuba co-stamped pocket watch, gifted to Mahatma Gandhi by Jawaharlal Nehru, is still on display at the Gandhi National Museum in New Delhi.
Some revivals feel inevitable. Favre Leuba’s feels like the archive moving again.
@favreleuba
#PaidPartnership
At first glance, the Swatch x Audemars Piguet conversation looks like another luxury-meets-hype moment.
Royal Pop, however, is less wristwatch and more wearable object: neck, wrist, pocket, bag. The collection features eight bioceramic pocket watches inspired by the Royal Oak’s octagonal codes and Swatch’s 1980s POP spirit.
After Omega and Blancpain, Swatch knows the playbook: take watchmaking codes, make them accessible and let hype do the distribution. This time, though, Swatch is stepping outside its own group.
For Audemars Piguet, the move is more layered. Privately held, family-owned and 150 years deep into horological legacy, AP has spent decades building the Royal Oak into a symbol of craft, scarcity and cultural capital. Royal Pop also sits within the maison’s long tradition of pocket watches, rooted in the 19th century.
Priced around $400-$420 (approx ₹ 38,000-40,000), the official launch is set for May 16, 2026. But the reveal had to be pulled forward after AI mock-ups and online speculation ran ahead of the brands. In other words, the internet got to the story before the drop did.
The detail that complicates the usual hype critique? AP will use 100% of its proceeds to preserve watchmaking savoir-faire and train the next generation of horological talent.
Still, the question stays: has heritage found a younger audience, or has hype redrawn the rules of legacy? And how far does a luxury watchmaker have to go to speak to an audience fluent in queues, drops and memes?
@swatch_in@audemarspiguet
Illustrated journalism has always lived in the margins of serious news, despite doing some of its sharpest work.
In India, it has appeared as famine sketches, political cartoons and graphic testimony, often capturing what photographs or straight copy could not.
In 2026, that form received one of journalism’s most visible validations. Anand Radhakrishnan’s trAPPed, a Bloomberg graphic story on a digital arrest scam in India, won the Pulitzer Prize for Illustrated Reporting and Commentary, shared with journalists Suparna Sharma and Natalie Obiko Pearson.
The story follows Dr Ruchika Tandon, a Lucknow neurologist held under digital control for eight days by scammers using video calls, staged authority and sound effects. With few images to lean on, trAPPed turns fear, surveillance and psychological control into reportage.
In a media climate where India ranks 157 out of 180 on the World Press Freedom Index, the drawn frame feels less like a stylistic choice and more like a serious journalistic instrument.
Link in bio
By Arshia Dhar (@urseaa )
#illustratedjournalism #PulitzerPrize #visualreportage #Indianmedia #cultureandmedia
Absolut Creative Commune, Edition Four, gathers pace without fixing a single direction. Curated by SPRYK (@spryk.in ), Absolut Creative Commune (@absolutborncolourless ) brings together Abhijit Vinayak (@abhijitvinayak ), Akshita Sinha (@akshitasnha ), Amalendu Kaushik (@amalendu_k ), Damini Gupta (@daminope ), Era Namjoshi (@eranamjoshi ), and Surabhi Banerjee (@surabhi_b6 ), each arriving with their own references, methods, and tensions.
Set against a moment where images are increasingly seamless and uniform, this edition leans into difference as a condition. The works don’t yield a single reading. They hold onto friction, authorship, and intent without smoothing themselves out.
The result stays open, shaped as much by process as by what finally comes into view.
#Collaboration #BornColourless #AbsolutCreativeCommune #AbsolutMixers
Who decided jasmine was feminine and oud was for men? Fragrance has spent years pretending gender has a smell. This extends to packaging as well—pink bottle for her, black bottle for him.
But the new fragrance consumer is harder to sort. They are buying by note, mood, skin chemistry, memory and whatever self they are trying on that day.
Gender-neutral fragrance is not about smelling neutral. It is about removing the lazy labels from scent, and letting perfume do what it was always meant to do: sit on skin, shift with the wearer and say something more interesting than “for him” or “for her”.
Read more in the link in bio.
By Ria Bhatia (@riabbhatia )
People gossip about who “looks gay” who looks butch who looks like a dyke who looks “slutty” who is trying too hard who is visibly trans. The judgement happens near-constantly. And not everyone gets read the same way or survives it equally.
For queer folx makeup and gender expression are not fixed identity markers. They are decisions made in motion: what to wear, where to wear it, when to soften it and when to let it take up space.
Even within queer spaces some people have more room to experiment than others. For queer and trans people who grew up before fluidity became marketable, visibility has rarely been just trend or self-expression.
It has been a balancing act with safety expectations and the cost of being seen.
Read more on the link in bio
By Tejaswi Subramanian
Sport is no longer sitting outside the culture of going out. It is becoming part of how urban India plans its time, moves through the city and chooses its leisure. District Play sits inside that shift.
Across cricket, football, badminton, tennis and pickleball, the app turns courts and turfs into bookable plans, with live slots and instant confirmation.
As District (@district.play ) extends from tables, screens and stages to courts and turfs, play becomes another way to spend time well.
Location courtesy: Area83 (@area83.blr )
Don Julio Non-Alcoholic Beverages’ Cinco On with Don came alive as a one-night cultural experience, bringing together fashion, art, music, food, and immersive Mexican street-style décor.
At the centre was its collaboration with Anamika Khanna—five couture looks inspired by Mexican heritage and interpreted through Indian craftsmanship. The collection balanced movement, and detail, translating the spirit of Mexican celebration through Khanna’s signature language of drape, surface, and form.
The evening unfolded through live music and performers and Mexican street-inspired flavours with Don Julio Non-Alcoholic Beverages seamlessly integrated into the moments of the night.
A celebration shaped through craft, fashion, performance, and detail.
@donjuliononalc
#CincoOnWithDon #DonJulioNonAlcBeverages
#ModernMexicanaCouture
#SummerOfCinco #PorAmor
