The Sabyasachi world, magnified

Opening on August 25, the flagship doubles Sabyasachi’s footprint in Delhi, a market that contributes approximately 30% of the brand’s global revenue. Alongside bridal couture, menswear, saris and ready-to-wear, the store introduces dedicated salons for high jewellery and accessories. The Banarsi, brocade saris start at Rs 89,000, while the gowns and wedding lehengas in pastels, dabka and zardozi embroidery cost around Rs 20 lakh per piece. The new flagship is not just an extension of Sabyasachi’s fashion universe, it is an argument for commerce as a way of keeping culture alive. “I have never believed that a luxury store should simply sell products. It should inspire curiosity, preserve culture and create memories,” says Sabyasachi Mukherjee, founder and creative director. “Commerce may bring people through the door, but culture is what makes them return.”

For Mukherjee, stores are a way of making culture accessible. “My friends with children often struggle to find places where younger generations can encounter India’s artistic traditions outside museums and cultural institutions.” The designer is wary of the idea of keeping art for oneself. “If I buy art or textiles, I prefer putting them into spaces where other people can experience them. Craft cannot survive by being admired. It needs to be consumed, commissioned and supported. If a generation stops using a craft, it can disappear very quickly. So I see commerce as a form of cultural patronage.”

That philosophy is visible throughout. West Bengal is a recurring character: a life-size Bengal tiger sculpture makes a dramatic appearance, while labyrinthine passages evoke the corridors of old North Calcutta homes. References to Hogg Market and the cosmopolitan history of Chowringhee emerge through arrangements of porcelain, paintings, textiles, carpets, sculpture and furniture. The scale is deliberately extravagant: more than 120 chandeliers, 200 antique carpets, 300 original paintings from the Sabyasachi Art Foundation, and more than 100 antique textiles, mirrors and historic decorative objects.

The flagship also marks the beginning of a multi-year collaboration with New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, drawing inspiration from its collection spanning more than 5,000 years of global art and culture. A few select jewellery pieces inspired by the Byzantine Empire are among the highlights displayed at the store. For Mukherjee, the purpose is not to freeze heritage in the past, but to give it another life. “It is about making heritage accessible and relevant to contemporary life. A museum can preserve history, but when those ideas, crafts and aesthetics enter people’s homes, they begin to have a different kind of life,” he says.

For the brand, the commercial proposition remains substantial. The expansion comes as Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail Ltd (ABFRL) moves to corporatise the luxury brand by converting Sabyasachi Calcutta into a newly incorporated company, Sabyasachi India, giving ABFRL about 51% of Sabyasachi India’s equity share capital.

However, corporatisation for Mukherjee is about the relationship in which creative control and business growth coexist. “I look after the business too. I run the business, and they (ABFRL) are very good silent supporters. For me, the most important thing is that the creative vision and the business can coexist without one compromising the other,” says the designer. And then there is maximalism—the visual language that has become inseparable from Mukherjee. “Maximalism is India’s. India is full of that. You should never minimise. You don’t need to,” he says. “India has always had a natural relationship with abundance, whether through colour, craft, ornamentation, textiles or jewellery.”

Yet, he acknowledges, that maximalism requires resources and is not accessible to everyone. “Ultimately, people should have the freedom to choose how much of it they want in their own lives,” he tells FE. “But if India has the means to do it, why not?”