As a child in his grandmother’s flower garden, tucked within this city of concrete and traffic, the Thai jewelry designer Sarran Youkongdee found early inspiration. The fine art of preparing and presenting flowers is integrated into almost all of his jewelry designs — and many of them in full bloom in pieces meant to cover hands, ears, heads and more.
“Every morning at 5, I was awakened to gather flowers for traditional remedies and for fragrance, and three flowers stood out for me: dok rak, jasmine and gardenia,” Mr. Youkongdee said in a recent interview at his studio here on the banks of the teeming Chao Phraya River. “I was also tasked with placing jasmine offerings at the household altar. I saw how each garland required time and balance. I try to duplicate that in my jewelry.”
That very approach informs his work. Mr. Youkongdee, 43, made a splash last month at New York Fashion Week when he unveiled his new Rak Ambassador line, which is a homage to the Ayutthaya era (14th to the 18th centuries) when his country became hugely influential through diplomacy with European and Asian powers and also produced elaborate temples and artwork.
The era is also associated with color-splashed flower arrangements, such as the latticework of jasmine garlands strung by hand that religious pilgrims — and the millions of tourists who flock here each year — place at Buddhist and Hindu temples.
The Ambassador line is currently for sale at the 3NY fashion concept store in New York through April, with additional pieces also available at Mr. Youkongdee’s store in Bangkok starting April 1. The collection includes, like his other lines, necklaces, bangles, earrings, pins (ranging in price from about $300 to as high as $150,000 and higher) and also the item that sets him apart from other jewelry makers: head pieces.
One of his first, evoking a sort of K-pop “King and I,” was worn by Lisa, the Thai singer of the K-pop band Blackpink, in her debut record-breaking music video “Lalisa” in 2021. The piece had approximately 500 semiprecious stones, including zircon and agate, on a foundation made of brass and plated with gold.
And he designed a stemmed lotus flower fashion accessory for Lisa to carry for the world premiere of the HBO series “The White Lotus” (in which she starred) in Los Angeles in February 2025. The piece, its stem and outer petals made of brass, embellished a gown by Miss Sohee. Lisa’s stylist asked Mr. Youkongdee to design a piece in three days. He did.
“This is a flower long associated with Thailand, so I decided to base the gold tone on the color of the lotus flower in the morning,” he explained through an interpreter, also referring to his morning duties as a child. “Its six petals are created from a compressed blend of silk, cotton and linen, shaped through heat and then given a ceramic glass-like coating.”
This technique is a signature of his work. Mr. Youkongdee occasionally uses gemstones, but his elaborate works, especially the headpieces, are much lighter without gemstones. This is reflected in the Ambassador line, but one major signature piece, which premiered during New York Fashion Week, does incorporate jewels and is worn both as a headpiece and around or over the chest, connected by a strand of flowerlike jewels along the neck.
“The piece incorporates 2,300 white zircon stones,” he said. “I chose brass as the primary material as it is traditionally used in Thai culture to create vessels that hold flowers in the art of floral craftsmanship, and the surface is finished with pure gold plating.”
Every component is sculpted to evoke the image of flowers growing from the body, he said. Overall, it took a month to complete. Priced at 2,300,000 Thai baht, or around $74,000, it will be on display in his Bangkok boutique in April.
Mr. Youkongdee graduated from Srinakharinwirot University in Bangkok in 2005 with a degree in painting and began his career as a designer within the home décor and product design industries.
He credits those six years with giving him a foundation for running a business. He received a fellowship from the Japan Foundation, a cultural exchange program, and lived in Tokyo for six months. He returned to Thailand and began to design jewelry.
His early body of work was recognized with the Good Design Award in Japan. In 2016, he received the Vogue Who’s on Next award. One of his works is part of the permanent collection at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York.
He also designed a flowing 18-inch earring made of his usual compressed textiles for the musician Alicia Keys when she performed for the opening of ICONSIAM, a massive mall along the Chao Phraya River, in 2018. That collection reinterpreted jasmine garlands, symbols of Thai hospitality and welcome, and is one of his favorite pieces.
“Sarran captures the sensibility of Thailand with these flower designs, almost like looking at the imagined ladies of the royal court during the Ayutthaya-era Thailand,” said Chaiyong Ratana-Angkura, chairman of the Creative Economy Agency of Thailand, which also oversees Bangkok Design Week. “If you look at the murals in palaces or the temples all over Thailand, you see depictions of khon dancing and the amazing pieces from history. Sarran really captures that.”
Many of Mr. Youkongdee’s pieces have been lent to celebrities, including Lisa and Ms. Keys, and he hopes to auction them to help establish a foundation dedicated to supporting women’s stories through art, again an outgrowth of his grandmother’s urban garden.
“The flowers in my childhood were always carefully placed in banana leaves to preserve their freshness before my grandmother and mother transformed them into garlands,” he recalled. “I’ve carried that with me. Behind any kind of beauty, there is always a story.”
The post The Gardens of His Childhood Now Show Up in His Designs appeared first on New York Times.
