Who
Singaporean-born Indian model Gurmit Kaur.
Beginnings
Born in Changi Village in Singapore, Ms Gurmit was fascinated by sculpture and as a young girl taught mathematics to help pay her way through art school. At the age of 19, she ran away from home to escape from an arranged marriage, arrived in Brussels and married instead Belgium's leading sculptor Olivier Strebelle. Yves St Laurent discovered her during a trip to Paris and she embarked on a star-studded modelling career. When she had enough of working on the catwalk, she decided to study jewellery making at Des Arts et Metiers, and eventually launched her own line in the early 1990s.
She says 'There is a mathematical underworld to all organisms; my jewellery is my tool to show the architecture and the beauty that exist in unseen nature.'
Celeb factor