Bag Bijoux debuts award-winning diamond charm with 36.89-carat yellow center

Ashna Mehta turned a handbag accessory into the night’s most conspicuous high-jewelry statement at Couture in Las Vegas, where Gilded Bloom Haute Bag Bijoux won top honors in the Design Awards. The piece centers on a 36.89-carat natural fancy intense yellow cushion-cut diamond and is built to move between a bag charm, a pendant and a high-jewelry brooch or pin.

Mehta entered the jewel in Couture’s haute couture category, and the award placed Bag Bijoux squarely in the conversation around luxury objects that are no longer meant to sit still. Gilded Bloom is set in 18-karat white and yellow gold, with 6.65 carats total weight of kite-shape GH/VVS-VS diamonds and 34.9 carats total weight of rose-cut diamonds forming a floral silhouette around the center stone. The design was priced at $2.1 million.

The concept is as practical as it is theatrical. Bag Bijoux was built around the idea of personalizing Hermès bags without damaging resale value, a concern that has pushed a small but noticeable category of detachable luxury adornments into the spotlight. Mehta has said she was surprised no one else had done it and that she enjoys working in a space with “no rules or boundaries.” That freedom shows in Gilded Bloom, which treats a handbag as a platform for a removable jewel rather than a fixed decorative object.

The brand’s rise has been unusually fast. Mehta officially launched Bag Bijoux in 2022, and the label got an early lift after being spotted at the 2024 Ambani wedding, where its mix of spectacle and wearability found an audience among Hermès-toting clients. One of Mehta’s earlier pieces, the Barbie pendant from 2022, later appeared in the American Museum of Natural History’s 2024 exhibition Ice Cold: An Exhibition of Hip-Hop Jewelry, signaling that the brand’s work has already crossed from private adornment into museum-grade conversation.

Mehta’s family, connected to the Indian-Belgian diamond conglomerate Rosy Blue, helps support the concept and source stones, giving Bag Bijoux a supply-chain advantage that many newer high-jewelry labels do not have. At Couture, held Saturday evening at the Encore Theater with awards across 12 judged categories, the win suggested that the bag charm is no longer a novelty side note. It is becoming a status object in its own right, built to be worn, detached and displayed.