Is bridal wear on the wane?

So many guests walked out of Sabyasachi's grand 25th year celebration in Mumbai last weekend, a little confused, even outraged. How can India's most famous bridal wear designer not showcase a single bridal outfit? Guests were underwhelmed, or disappointed, unable to wrap their coiffed heads around the fact that India is changing, and fashion is now more than a lehenga.

- NAMRATA ZAKARIA

This is Sabyasachi 2.0. The designer is determined to spend the next 25 years of his label going global. But, he adds, the Indian consumer is also the global consumer. Indians want to wear what the world is wearing, and the only way to keep our repertoire of extraordinary crafts alive is by making clothes the world wants to wear.

Moreover, the designer presciently avers, “The marriage market is completely going to collapse.” Sabyasachi points to his Kolkata clients who complain to him that their daughters refuse to get married. “I tell them you send your daughters to Yale, Princeton and Radcliffe. You give them freedom and wisdom. But knowledge is a one-way street, you can’t give them knowledge and then send them back into the prison of marriage because it settles family businesses.”