The Gilded Straits

A Kinchos High Jewellery Collection

In the splendour of colonial Southeast Asia, a new ornamental language emerged – shaped by regional goldwork, touched by European court aesthetics, and forming the early visual lineage that would later influence Peranakan adornment.

The Gilded Straits is Kinchos’ study of that formative era: a high jewellery collection built from the architectural logic of the past and expressed through a modern hand.

This is not a reproduction.
It is a structured interpretation.

Set against the late 19th to early 20th centuries – when Russian ateliers such as Fabergé crafted for European royalty, and Southeast Asia’s port cities became conduits for design and material – artisans of the Straits merged indigenous motifs with colonial silhouettes. The results were objects that belonged to neither world entirely, but carried the tension and beauty of both.

In this spirit, The Gilded Straits presents a study in structure and contrast:

– Filigree informed by kerongsang clasps and Straits belt buckles
– Latticework shaped by Nyonya tile geometry and European court detailing
– Pearls used not as Peranakan codes, but as deliberate references to the regalia that once passed through colonial Malaya’s salons

Each piece is engineered as an object of cultural metamorphosis – grounded in history, refined through contemporary proportion, and shaped to the stone itself.

The Gilded Straits is a conversation across empire, craft, and inheritance.
A collection shaped by the past, constructed for legacy.