THE BENGAL TIGER TURNS SILVER SABYASACHI MUKHERJEE

He went from being fashion’s enfant terrible to a global ambassador of Indian aesthetics—be it fashion, jewellery and interiors, or museum-styled retailing, bespoke footwear and international collaborations. Brides Today toasts 25 extraordinary years of Sabyasachi’ trailblazing career, which originated in a fairly insular, humble Kolkata, circa 2000.

- SANGEETA WADDHWANI

Who would think that Sabyasachi Mukherjee, who is today synonymous with opulence and eccentricity, India-love and post-colonial ‘re-membering,’ had to struggle with his choice to embrace a career in fashion, studying at the National Institute of Fashion Technology, Kolkata?

The struggle began when his father, Shukumar Mukherjee, a chemical engineer in a jute-wool mill, lost his job when plastics took over. Sabyasachi was just 15. The son of a refugee from Bangladesh, Shukumar was raised by a single mother. Financial instability thus became a backdrop to Sabya’s student years.

There was also a time when his mother, Sandhya Mukherjee, a bohemian artist who taught at the government art college in Kolkata, had slapped the young schoolboy following his suicide attempt, telling him, “Depression is as common as the common cold. If you're not depressed, you are not normal.”

Fortunately for Sabyasachi, despite seven-and-a-half years of depression as a young boy (confessed in an interview to Business of Fashion Editor-in-Chief Imran Amed in 2019), life proved to be a portal of creative possibilities, and sadness had no place in it.

In what later proved to be a breakthrough moment in grade four, Sabyasachi was asked by his school drama teacher to handle scripting, set design, costume, lighting, jewels, hair and makeup for a school production of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. This super-hit experience revealed his deeply creative capabilities, tailored for “either the performing arts, in fashion or cinema—I wasn’t sure what exactly.”