It's been a great start of the year for the fashion industry in India. Just recently, designer Rahul Mishra made his debut at Paris Haute Couture Week, becoming the first Indian to do so. His historic show came just a few days after his colleague Sabyasachi Mukherjee was announced as the next H&M collaborator.
The top fast-fashion retailer's annual designer team-up is always a much-awaited occassion that has attracted big names such as the late Karl Lagerfeld, Kenzo, Balmain and many others. The brand's collaboration with Sabyasachi will mark their first time working with an Indian designer.
While he's already an icon in his native India, not everyone is aware of Sabyasachi's achievements and design philosophy. Before his collaborative collection with H&M comes out in April, learn more about the designer below:
1. Sabyasachi started small. Like, really small.
Born in Kolkata to a middle-class Bengal family, young Sabyasachi could be found in the streets, selling recycled baubles (described as "a potpourri of semiprecious stones, bones, horns and other accouterments of nature") in plastic tiffin boxes. His father wanted him to be an engineer, and Sabyasachi has mentioned in an interview that his initial challenge was to convince his parents that he could make a career in fashion.
Despite parental disapproval, he managed to enroll himself in National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT). His designing career began after he graduated in 1999 and opened his very own workshop with just "two or three workers."
Today, he is a prominent designer and the founder of his eponymous clothing label. He has also designed costumes for a variety of Bollywood films and expanded his business to include a jewelry line.
Promotional photo from Sabyasachi’s jewelry line
2. Kolkata has always been in the center of Sabyasachi's life and career. He still lives and works there, and Kolkata is always present in his designs. Just like the diverse and many people that call Kolkata home, Sabyasachi's creations are a fusion of styles, with textures, vibrant colors, patchwork designs and intricate details. Like the old city itself, a sense of antiquity is consistently found in his clothes. We look forward to see these design traits in his collaboration with H&M too.
3. Sabyasachi was the only Indian designer invited to showcase at the Milan Fashion Week in 2004, just two years after he made his debut at Lakme India Fashion Week.
Sabyasachi got his ticket to Milan, thanks to his Spring/Summer 2005 collection. Called Frog Princess, the collection also earned him his first international display at the high-end retailer, Browns, in London. He continued his success streak with a show at the New York Fashion Week the following season.
4. If his name sounds familiar to you, maybe because you've heard it mentioned several times during the much-publicized wedding of Priyanka Chopra and Nick Jonas. Sabyasachi is the designer of the bride's stunning red lehenga (a traditional full ankle-length skirt). He also made headlines in the same year for designing actors Deepika Padukone's and Ranveer Singh's respective lehenga and sherwani (a traditional coat-like garment) that they wore at their lavish wedding.
Dubbed the “King of India's Bridal Market” by Business of Fashion, Sabyasachi has dressed around 50.000 brides.
5. An avid supporter of sari, Sabyasachi has started a project to raise the costumers’ awareness about the traditional garment. Called “Save the Sari”, the project supports the artisans by buying their woven stock all year-round to ensure continuous income and employment.
“For me, the sari is a piece of textile, a primitive drape and not really a modern garment. But because it is primitive, it still remains classic,” he said in an interview. “It can be used in any modern context and as far as the sari as a garment of choice is concerned, I think what the sari does—because it’s so region specific—is automatically gives you a regional personality which for today is the best way to assert yourself in a global platform.”
