Kolkata-born designer Sabyasachi Mukherjee, who this year marked 25 years of his eponymous label, has become India’s most recognisable luxury export by building a brand on restraint rather than scale. From a three-person studio in 1999, the Sabyasachi label has grown into a Rs 1,200-crore fashion house with flagship stores in Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata and New York, alongside partnerships with Bergdorf Goodman, H&M and Estée Lauder.
Mukherjee’s strategy rests on what he calls “the discipline of no.” Unlike global luxury giants that flood markets with seasonal collections, Sabyasachi has deliberately avoided mass distribution, fast fashion cycles or celebrity-driven overexposure. His creations are hand-built by over 2,000 artisans across India, turning commerce into what he describes as “cultural preservation.”
The result is the globally recognisable “Sabyasachi bride,” a cultural archetype made iconic through weddings of Bollywood stars such as Anushka Sharma, Deepika Padukone and Priyanka Chopra. Yet, for Mukherjee, the real achievement lies in reviving dying crafts. He recalls investing Rs 15,000 to revive traditional kirna tinsel work for Padukone’s bridal attire, an act he calls “small capital, big preservation.”
The brand today competes with global maisons not by imitation but by rooting itself in Indian provenance. Stores are designed as “living museums,” with layered textiles, rugs and tapestries intended to deliver what Mukherjee terms “forty per cent commerce, sixty per cent culture.” His New York flagship opened in 2022 to critical acclaim for reimagining Indian heritage in a global context.
Industry observers note that India’s luxury market, estimated at $8.5 billion in 2023 and projected to cross $20 billion by 2030, is now moving beyond Western labels. Mukherjee believes this shift will position India as the world’s teacher of “value” in luxury—rare, authentic and rooted in craft.
