With the rambunctious and rowdy beat of Future’s “Turn On the Lights” playing quietly in the background, Sanam Sindhi stares into the lens of her iPhone and gingerly adjusts her highly ornate chunni. Fiddling with her fire engine red ponytail that is decorated with the tiniest of yellow flowers, Rihanna’s “Bitch Better Have My Money” henchwoman can be seen admiring her flawless makeup job of a severe kohl eye and purple lip. The 25-year-old’s multiple tiers of bracelets jangle about on her tatted arms and her gilded tika shines from the perch of her nose.

It’s a 15-second Instagram video, but it perfectly encapsulates the modern Desi girl style that the New York–based writer and artist has in droves. Her bold mash-up of traditional Indian garb with modern cool flourishes has attracted the likes of Rihanna and Pat McGrath alike, and is most certainly also inspiring a legion of creative young Indian women. With both a penchant for athleisure glam and a roster of screen muses from Bollywood and beyond, Sindhi has created a fresh look that’s a simultaneously cool, cheeky, and reverential approach to her roots.

Here she explains how the modern Desi girl élan is an attitude as much as it’s about the clothes, why she’s an accidental style star, and where she sources her enviable jewelry.