Why I built LIANA — and why it is allowed to change.

I think my love for jewelry started long before I ever made my first piece.

When I was little, my grandma would open her jewelry box and tell me the story behind every ring, every necklace, every little treasure she had collected over the years.

She never started with what it was worth.
She told me where she’d found it.
Who gave it to her.
What was happening in her life when she wore it.

There were two rings I always came back to.
One was made from three different shades of gold, woven together.
The other was silver with a small gold symbol on top. Most of the gold had worn away over the years.
I remember thinking it was even more beautiful because of that.
It looked loved.

Looking back, I think that’s where it all started.
With stories.

Years later, I found myself in Rishikesh, learning to make jewelry by hand.
For the first time, I watched silver melt.
Something that looked so solid became completely fluid within minutes.
Then it was shaped, hammered, filed and polished until it became something entirely new.

I loved every part of it.

There was something deeply calming about working with your hands.
Watching raw material slowly become something someone might wear for the rest of their life.

A few years later, I travelled to Jaipur.

Gemstone dealers would arrive with small paper packets and open them across the table. Every stone changed the design around it. Some were quiet. Some pulled the whole piece in another direction.

That stayed with me: the material is not a detail added at the end. It changes what the piece is allowed to say.

LIANA's pieces carry Watermelon Tourmaline — a stone that holds pink and green together, without resolving into just one colour.

I am returning to Jaipur to choose these stones myself, one by one, and decide what belongs in the final pieces.

The gold line remains. It does not hide what changed the surface. It marks the part that later became inseparable from what makes the piece distinct.

That’s why I created LIANA.
Not to make a collection that looks finished before it is true.
And not to make beautiful jewelry simply for the sake of beauty.

I wanted to create symbols.

Pieces that hold something you don’t want to lose. Where you’ve been. What changed you. What mattered enough to carry forward.

Because years from now, I don’t think you’ll remember every outfit you wore.
But I think you’ll remember the woman you became while wearing a certain ring.

And maybe that’s what jewelry has always been.
Not decoration.
A story you can carry.

— Melissa Sopha