New York State Of Mind

Shanya Amarasuriya is drawing on her transformative years in the Big Apple to make her mark in the family’s luxury jewellery business.

- Karen Tee

What kind of engagement ring would one procure to propose to the fifth-generation scion of a luxury jewellery company? That was the challenge for 29-year-old Shanya Amarasuriya’s fiance, she says with a laugh. Needless to say, the creative director of Singapore-based BP de Silva Jewellers dropped many hints.

By the time he made a secret appointment with her father, Sunil, to ask for her hand in marriage and to engage the company’s artisans to create a bespoke ring, he had a good idea of her preferences.

“I told him I like Art Deco-style jewellery and baguette-cut diamonds,” she says in a video interview, bringing her hand closer to offer a look at her geometrically shaped bling featuring one large diamond surrounded by many smaller ones. “I didn’t want anything too ostentatious and it had to symbolically represent the woman I want to be.”