ATTN: the couturier now bets on beauty

With this Estée Lauder collaboration, Sabyasachi's tiger motif finds a place on gilded lipstick cases...reiterating that the designer is unstoppable.

- Simi Kuriakose

For the world, he’s a master of luxe imagery and dreamy couture. In fact, it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that the Indian equivalent of a ‘dream wedding gown’ is a Sabyasachi lehenga. However, as I chat with the force that helms the brand—seated in a comfortable nook in his Kolkata home, Sabyasachi Mukherjee tells me on a Zoom call that he’s “thriving” thanks to the weather—it is evident how aware he is of what his brand means to the middle-class Indian woman with lofty aspirations. “The cheapest product by us right now is a belt. And I have seen how women make videos out of their experiences of going to our store and buying it. When I see these videos, I am like, ‘so this is what we mean to a consumer!’. When you become a powerful brand in a geography, you have to be responsible and learn to deliver your promise at every price point. We can never short-change the consumer out of that promise,” he says.