deHania… So Precious!

Have you already experienced love at first sight with a piece of jewellery? If so, we speak the same language, and here’s a new trendy yet soulful word for you: deHania. 

This beautiful jewellery brand, started in 2010, offers three prime lines: Staccato, Siren and Peinture. The idea behind deHania is to allow women like me and you to wear great jewellery without breaking the bank or having to go naked, being unable to afford clothes anymore. All collections are made from the finest materials, precious and semi-precious stones, set in precious metals, with contemporary designs that follow the fashion trends, in terms of colour palettes, shapes or even materials. 

One of the key lines is Peinture, a very original and stunning collection, made of genuine hand-paintings on canvas by different artists, framed in delicate openwork metal. The designer, Hania Afifi, is part of the artistic society in Dubai and the artists she met got pretty excited by this challenge she presented them with, working at such a small scale, support-wise. The result is absolutely stunning and gives rise to multiple variations. It all starts from a theme, like last season’s collection “First Blush”, a sentence, or even sometimes just a single world. Hania also works closely with a workshop, from the conception and the design to the end-product. 

The Siren line is my personal favourite, with the gorgeous statement necklaces in turquoise or coral and gold, perfect for summer time!

As its name suggests, the inspiration for the Staccato line is musical, with detached stones and pearls as notes on long gold chains, creating extremely delicate sautoirs.

Based in Dubai, the designer perfectly reflects her brand: beautiful, delicate, soulful, and her story is a very interesting one. Starting her career in consulting at Arthur Andersen, she quickly moved to a more creative industry, advertising. But it wasn’t creative enough and she felt the urge of going much further in the creation process and to set up something of her own. So after seven years of handling lots of different brands, she decided it was time to follow her very own way and to feel at last “the passion and the commitment you will never feel when you work on somebody else’s products”, she confesses. Taking the matter in her own hands, she enrolled in a 6-months course at the very prestigious ESMOD school in Paris and also trained with metal artisans.

Creating and developing a new brand is obviously not an easy thing and the path is full of hurdles but, as she says, at the end of the day, having created something from scratch, a proper product that you can feel, see, touch, as opposite to something more abstract like a service, is deeply rewarding. As well as is to see women on the street actually wearing your creations!

deHania jewellery is sold in Bloomingdales in Dubai and is also available online or by simply emailing the designer at [email protected]. Hania is planning on developing her brand internationally and she will be participating in Eclat de Mode next September, an international event dedicated to the fashion jewellery universe, as part of the Parisian Fashion Week.

Laurie Guillem

deHania website: http://dehania.com/ – Eclat de mode: http://www.bijorhca.com/