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Strains of a violin - and magnificent clothes
If there is a new god on India's fashion horizon, it is Sabyasachi Mukherjee. He makes clothes - and that is just the beginning.
If there is a new god on India's fashion horizon, it is Sabyasachi Mukherjee.
He makes clothes - and that is just the beginning.
He makes clothes that are more spectacular in sensibility, more flamboyant in reasoning, more mature in intellectuality than any other.
He sprays old perfume before the show begins. On his profile card on every chair, he writes - in a child scrawl - "Snehlata has passed her elocution test". He wraps candy in cloth and urges his audience to munch on during the show.
And then, his show at the fifth India fashion week begins.
On Saturday, Mukherjee showed an aesthetic that is so devoid of any material influence that it could almost be spiritual - he calls this an intellectual grunge.
His toes are yellow with dye, nails worn away after days of dyeing his fabrics to get a certain stained, sprayed, worn look that defies every sense of perfection.
This is personalized imperfection at its divine moment.
His collection is called "The Frog Princess", for women Mukherjee calls fiercely independent. Once a jewellery designer, Mukherjee understands the magic of intricacies, it is his moments of imperfection that are his greatest successes.
If you desire to wear Sabyasachi Mukherjee, you must think. Otherwise, you don't deserve to wear him.
From the embroidery on the kolhapuri shoes that are coupled with coloured socks, the knits that have their lived-in look and the flowers that are made of scraps of cloth, which are hand-stitched - everything reeks of class that is so seldom seen in Indian design that it is almost extinct.
His clothes know no trends, follow no rule, are never staid nor staccato.
In his show, as music he used a lone violinist, playing a tune that seeped in through the clothes, breaking new ground.
The music flows as if from his own heart, creating treads of feeling around the collection, priced between Rs.6,000 and Rs.12,000.
There is one sari for Rs.28,000 - Mukherjee's extravagance in the collection.
They are stained, bleached, streaked and even dirty - but they are all that because Mukherjee wants them to be that way.
And he deserves applause for that.
