Arpana Rayamajhi Tries a Different Speed
The celebrated jewelry designer was at the top of the world when the pace of the fashion industry became unsustainable. Now she's returning in a different medium: music. And the result is just as special.
- Written by: Muna Mire
- Photography by: Stephanie Geddes
In 2016, Arpana Rayamajhi, a self taught jeweler and musician, was commissioned to make jewelry for the annual Victoria’s Secret fashion show. The theme was “The Road Ahead” and the show leaned heavily on traditional Chinese and Nepali textiles and jewelry. Her colorful pieces, made of fibers, beads, coins, and other found materials, dangled from the necks of megafamous celebrities—household names like Kendall Jenner and Adriana Lima. It was a huge opportunity for the emerging designer.
So when the brand faced immediate and vitriolic blowback online for cultural appropriation, Rayamajhi was surprised. She makes pieces directly inspired by her life as a Nepali migrant who left Kathmandu to come to New York City, with materials sourced from her homeland and her immediate environment. The theme of the show was migration, after all.
Rayamajhi has never been in the business of mass-producing her pieces for profit. She is deeply interested in what becomes of the art object once it leaves her studio and enters the world. As a formally trained visual artist who has found success in the fashion industry, she sees the contradictions inherent in purchasing a commodity—a necklace or a T-shirt—as a way of making a coherent political statement.
Appropriation is arguably the lifeblood of fashion: borrowing and reimagining ideas move the medium forward, inspiring designers to push into new terrain. But questions of power remain. In August, designer Willy Chavarria launched a footwear collaboration with Adidas reimagining the huarache sandal. “It's, like, literally one of the most classic Chicano references with the white sock," Chavarria said at a panel held at the Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico where the shoe was first unveiled.
Both he and the brand were immediately threatened with legal action by the country of Mexico, where the huarache is a protected cultural commodity, meaning the manufacturing process cannot be divorced from the Oaxacan community. The making of the object is what defines it. Chavarria’s Adidas collaboration was manufactured in China. Both he and Adidas have issued formal apologies.
It stands to reason that, in this context, Rayamajhi’s skepticism is justified. As an artist, she is unwilling to stay silent about the cruelties of the world around her but humble enough to understand that, whatever she wants to say, it probably can’t be said from the runway. And so, after a nearly four year hiatus, the 37-year-old has turned to an entirely different medium: sound. Rayamajhi was forced to take a break from work after a prolonged illness made on-camera appearances impossible, preventing her from pursuing modeling and prompting her to slow down and turn inward.
Making music came naturally once Rayamajhi accepted that the pace at which she’d been making jewelry was unsustainable. Instead, she set out on a journey to explore what it would mean to move at a different speed.
She is set to release her debut album, About Time, alongside an accompanying jewelry line—“A for Arpana”—on October 24. Her music lands somewhere between Cleo Sol and Sufjan Stevens, a deceptively sweet sounding, melancholic lyricism. We spoke over Zoom recently to discuss her new project and how making music at this moment in time has pushed her to grow both as a person and an artist.
Muna Mire
Arpana Rayamajhi
What have you been up to in the years since your last SSENSE editorial?
Well, the pandemic flipped everything upside down for all of us. I decided to go back to school. I went to acting school at the William Esper Studio in Midtown. I did the two-year Meisner program and it was right after I'd graduated from Cooper Union for painting. Now, I’m making music, working on my debut album, About Time.
What drew you to acting school? And how did you end up making music?
My [late] mother, Sushila Rayamajhi, was a famous actor in Nepal. I’ve always loved film and acting and grew up in that world. I moved away from acting around age fourteen because I thought I had to find my own way. When I was a kid, I pursued music heavily. In my mind I thought, “I’m going to do music because it’s so far off from acting.” I started making jewelry to make money. It brought me into the fashion world which in turn helped me land acting opportunities. I found a really incredible agent that took a chance with me in 2018. Then the strikes—WGA and SAG—happened.
Oh God. So you decided to go back to making music?
I got very sick starting in 2020 and I wasn’t fully recovered until 2023. It absolutely forced me to take a step back from everything. Before I got sick, my job put me in front of the camera, either as a model, actor, or spokesperson for my jewelry line. Getting sick meant I broke out in a full body rash. My head swelled to the size of a fucking basketball. Jesus. I mean, it was really bad. But I am just so fortunate I can talk about that without getting emotional. I mean, don't get me wrong. If I think about it, it's still very scary. But I know I'm out of it now.
I’m so sorry, I think a lot of people got sick—COVID or not—due to the stress and lack of access to healthcare services. I did.
What's really funny is everything that wasn’t working out would eventually bring me back to my first love and my first commitment, which is music. In 2023, I started making songs. This time with a purpose and an intention that was more solid than ever. I wasn't questioning myself as much. I wasn't questioning if I was talented enough. I wasn't questioning if I was a good songwriter, a good vocalist, or what it would take to make this album happen. Everything felt very, very, monumental and I felt very small.
The world almost ending will reset your priorities like that.
I've been writing songs all my life without sharing my music with people. There are so many times I sat by myself at my desk, whether it was making my jewelry or working on other creative projects, thinking to myself: “You’re wasting your talents.” I wasn't very happy with myself. But now I'm finally doing what I had promised myself at fourteen and I couldn't be happier. But it’s also scary. I'm like: “Did I really just jeopardize every opportunity I’ve been given?”
Why would you be jeopardizing future opportunities?
Working in fashion, for example, right? It's such a closed-off industry. I had the opportunity to be seen by some of the biggest industry heads. I've been very fortunate in that respect. I was getting recognized as a jeweler. Big fashion brands were collaborating with me. And I felt as though, instead of building that, I still had a lot of growing up to do. And was I willing to risk everything to grow as a person and as an artist? There was always a little bit of back and forth with that. I was very hesitant to try [something new] because there's a lot of fear attached. But life had other plans for me, or maybe I manifested it myself. I think when you have to start all over again, it's like, you know, I just built this house. Do I now just say, well, it's time to build another one and move somewhere completely new?
And how do you now relate to jewelry making as an expression of your creativity?
As much as it is an extension of me, it doesn't speak, it doesn't say much. People look at my jewelry in a very aesthetic sense. Like, it's an art object and it lives in a certain context: a marketplace where money changes hands. The whole relationship [to what you make] is very, very different. There was a lot of distance between that medium and me. I could hide behind it. Working in fashion at a time when social media started taking over, at some point, you are [pushed to] produce stuff much quicker than you're capable of. You feel like you have to keep going on and on—you have to keep up with this tempo and this rhythm that is not conducive to creativity at all. Especially as an independent designer, as somebody who is fighting to be seen, I felt like I needed to step off this hamster wheel of producing objects at a rate that I was not capable of. I'm not a machine. I refuse to be one.
How does the process of making music compare to jewelry making?
I think jewelry allowed me to be a bit of a hermit in my studio. People weren't really invited into the process. I could do it on my own. In 2023, when I sat down to write these songs, it was after I was pretty unwell for four years, like I said. And I was really at rock bottom, or like, the height of my pain. It was both. I would sit and try to make sense of my life and it would start taking the shape of a song. The words and the melody all just kind of happen at one time. I kid you not, in ten days, I had twelve fully realized songs. It had been going on inside me for so long that it was just time for it to happen.
What is About Time about?
Wouldn't things be more fun if I were to keep that to myself and you have to find out what it is about? It's not a conceptual album. Really good songwriters can kind of be like poets, right? It’s up to you to interpret it. Not that I’m a poet. I have a touch of imposter’s syndrome. It’s an ongoing existential crisis for me.
Maybe a better question is what mood would you say the album evokes?
It’s like if melancholy were wearing a smiley face mask.
It sounds like it was a very organic process making the album.
Music making has been a test in a completely different way. The amount of patience and time you need is what's killing me now. I have so much time to think about it. Music has taught me that I write all my songs on my own. I need solitude to write them. But at the end of that writing process, it's very collaborative. I feel like I'm working in a community of artists now that I didn't have when I was in fashion. If anything, I'm not hiding anymore.
On that note, you are not shy about speaking out. What’s changed for you that you moved from a place of making beautiful but ultimately silent objects and adornments to a place of needing to speak, particularly about Gaza?
It's imperative that if I claim to be an artist, I contribute to this world in a way that is more meaningful than just bringing all the eyes and attention to me and my work. The world has given me a lot. It has taught me a lot. And I feel like I owe something, too. I don't exist in a vacuum and I can't just take, take, take. It's not good for me, it's not good for my soul, and I would probably be very empty as a person.
What does it feel like to record an album with all of this violence in the background?
In some ways, it feels more meaningful, more urgent. It's an attempt at happiness and survival and pushing through no matter what. As time has gone on, my practice has sort of reverted back to what I love. I don’t want to use the word “therapeutic” in a flippant way because we use that word quite often. Therapy and self care and blah blah blah. But I genuinely don’t know what I would do in life and in moments like this if it wasn’t for making music.
Do you feel other artists have stepped up to the plate?
Yes. Everyone I've looked up to since I was a kid. Not everyone—but a lot of people that I've really looked up to—artists like Björk and Massive Attack who are right now at the forefront of one of the biggest [cultural] revolutions in the world. People that I love listening to, like Rage Against the Machine. That's the culture I grew up in. That's what inspired me. And I still see myself as somebody who aspires to be a part of that.
Are you still making jewelry?
Yes, I am—I actually have a new line “A for Arpana” coming out alongside my debut album. It’s a double offering. I believe an idea can live in many forms and I want to explore as many as possible. But with intention and love.
Muna Mire is a writer and producer based in Brooklyn.
- Written by: Muna Mire
- Photography by: Stephanie Geddes
