Sabyasachi’s tiger motif finds a place on gilded lipstick cases

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.

It is crystal clear that for the 50-year-old designer, the customer eclipses all other factors. Sabyasachi doesn’t care about being “number one or even number 10”. His aim for the brand, however, is to become like “the Reserve Bank of India for a woman—every time she’s in a mode of crisis, mine is the dependable brand she comes back to.” This linear vision shines through when he’s (finally) taken a leap into the world of beauty, with a limited-edition lipstick collection in collaboration with beauty giant, Estée Lauder. “I did not want to create something for shock value. I wanted to create something that’s personal, has great quality, is tactile...something a woman would come back to again and again. That’s when you know you’ve created something universal.”

It is not just universality that Sabyasachi concentrates on through this partnership. A fraction of his attention is also on delivering a sense of value. “I wanted to create something valuable...something that’s disposable yet gives a sense of investment.” Another reason for this creation was to be a (beauty) brand that gives women an identity. “It was about ‘How do I build an inclusive collection with 10 lipsticks?’ ‘How do I create a colour that a woman comes back to the brand for?’ I wanted to cut out the noise; focus on the core.”

Sabyasachi is no stranger to pushing boundaries, intrinsically using his past (and present) to craft luxury experiences. To him, “make-up is sensorial”; it is as much about colour and fragrance as it is about formulation and pigment. Take for instance, ‘Calcutta Red’—the shade will remind you of his brand’s signature red. ‘Coffee Masala’, on the other hand, of the brew popular in the havens of Southern India— where the designer spent years as an intern. ‘Muslin Tea’ was inspired by a nude hue he achieves when dyeing muslin in a tea liquor. I deduce that Sabyasachi has applied all the knowledge he’s gathered over “the 49 years that I have walked this Earth” into a beauty product. “To me, authenticity comes from delivering to a customer what you’ve learnt from your journey across the world,” he exclaims. The designer is then right for calling it “a global-local product”, given it’s the result of two things. First, the many years of him perfecting the art of hue, texture, and saturation—one he attributes to his mother, an art teacher; the painter in him; the many shades of “Calcutta” (Kolkata) and India; and the first two years of his career, when he’d “dye every fabric I created because I could not afford a dyer” (FYI: the first hues of the brand were created by Sabya who still formulates his own colours). Second, the world-class quality of formulation, which his collaborator, Estée Lauder, has mastery over. Sabyasachi says, “For 20 years, we have spoken about Indian beauty through campaigns, and because of our singularity of vision, it created an organic fan base for people to be able to want beauty out of our brand. Today, people want an authentic product that’s global-local. With this collaboration, we (Estée Lauder and Sabyasachi) ticked those boxes.”

There’s a tremendous contrast between Sabyasachi the businessman and the creator—his vision is singular while his design sense is dichotomous. And this dichotomy of minimalism and maximalism is what he’s channeled into the product as well. While it is ‘just 10’ lipsticks, it’s luxe—each features rich pigments, the Sabyasachi royal Bengal tiger motif is embossed on the gilded case and the tiger medallion’s engraved on the cap. “I told myself that I would create only 10 lipsticks, and nothing more for the rest of my life, so that the consumer gets a strong colour palette and doesn’t need to look elsewhere. The attitude was minimal—it came from clarity...the expression, maximal, as it came from celebration.”

The designer also showcases a streak of perfectionism when he shares how he “fussed over everything” right from “trying to get the right amount of brown or yellow pigment in a red to make that red look nicer” or even toying with the cinnamon notes that impart that scent to each lipstick to figure “how much of cinnamon is still fragrant without being obtrusive?”. “We were very sure that when we get the lipsticks (this range was four years in the making—the idea was initiated in 2019), we will place it right next to the Chanels and Diors of the world,” he proudly states. “My mantra for the last 20 years has been to create trendless beauty. I get heavily criticised for not bowing down to trends. But I’ve learnt to keep my head down, work hard, and promise to deliver the intent, which is an unwavering attitude towards quality. It is a hard time, because everybody wants to do something different. But I was clear—I would rather do something that was universal, but was beautifully done,” he concludes, as I think to myself, when it’s a Sabyasachi offering, that’s a given.

Imagery: Estée Lauder X Sabyasachi collection

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