When the pandemic brought lives to a halt last year, Sabyasachi Mukherjee, like all of us, realised that there is “so little control that you can actually exercise”. The global launch of his much-awaited collaboration collection with H&M included. H&M’s first with an Indian designer. So, he did what a lot of us did too. “Replenish” ourselves.

When we caught up with ‘Sabya’, as he is lovingly addressed, last week ahead of the launch of the collection, he looked fitter and more sprightly. “I am someone who has always thrived on control... I thought if I can’t control anything, let me control my mind and my body. I have been doing a lot of power yoga and running every day for seven kilometres. I have done so much for so many people... externally, I have done very little internally,” he smiled. And those eyes twinkled.

‘Wanderlust’ too was probably a state of mind for the master couturier, one of boundlessness, one that lights up your eyes. In a candid chat with The Telegraph, he took a deep dive into the world of ‘Wanderlust’ and left us with life nuggets, like only he could.

Sabyasachi Mukherjee Sourced by the correspondent

Many congratulations! It’s finally happening and for us, it is no less than waiting for the release of a big blockbuster...

There is a quote by Rumi that what you seek is seeking you. For any designer when they have reached the pinnacle of their career, this is like a lifetime achievement award. If you look at the people who have done this before... there’s been Karl Lagerfeld, Moschino, Balmain, Diane von Furstenberg.... They have also done special collaborations which are not designer collaborations, more licensing collaborations with people I love... David Beckham, Madonna. Then they have Lanvin and Stella McCartney, Versace, Jimmy Choo, Giambattista Valli... you name it....

It’s very funny that I was sitting in my room in Calcutta and Manav, who works on my social media, comes to me and says that he’s got an email from H&M that they want to do a collaboration with you. I said this is a mean trick to play on me! Then of course speedtrack to some of the heads from H&M, who are industry stalwarts who have started businesses like COS, are sitting in my living room in Calcutta and we are discussing the collaboration. I remember H&M saying: ‘Please say yes, we really want this collaboration to happen. We want an India collaboration and it has to be you.’ I laughed and then said this quote ‘what you seek is seeking you’... you wanted to do this collaboration as much as I wanted to.

One thing led to the other and here we are. They came to us about two years ago. Of course it got delayed by the pandemic, but it was a great experience working with them. You know this is not just going to be released in India, but all over the world. What is most exciting for me is that all over the world people will know it is Sabyasachi Calcutta. I have always been in love with the city and the city has been almost an iconic inference for me. To be able to take that story all over the world is pretty exciting.

When was the last time you waited for something for such a long time? Have you been patient or were there days when the delay got to you?

It was very frustrating. I’ll tell you why. None of us knew what was happening. Of course health and safety is the most important thing and also the optics. You don’t want to release a collection when the world is so low. We had multiple dates where we were so close to launch and then we had to pull out. We just wanted it to look right, feel right and we wanted to be able to do it at a time when the safety standards could be implemented. It was very important for all of us. Health and safety not just for us but also for the co-workers and shoppers.

Now it is a good timing because our world needs a bit of hope. It’s been too dismal for too long a time. For me, see, I don’t know if I’ll ever do a pret line again, but whenever I go on to Instagram, I am hammered by people that they love the clothes but they are unaffordable. And, I told myself that for once I have the opportunity to do something of a scale where everybody who has ever aspired to pick up something from the brand will be able to do it. I feel like the selfish giant who has let children come and play in his garden!

This period has been testing for all of us. Have your patience levels increased too?

I have always been very patient. I am a patient person and I am a quiet person because of the fact that I don’t really socialise and have a lot of time to internalise, but what the pandemic has taught me is the value of the present. We live so much of our lives thinking what the future holds that we always keep discounting the present. I hope that I can be in a situation where I can live for the moment more.

Have there been any changes in the final collection, now that you had some more time?

I’ll draw an analogy between this collection and wine. I think it just got better with age. The collection was about freedom. The H&M target audience is very young and a lot of my assistants are big consumers of H&M. I have always asked my assistants one question throughout the last five-six years that if money was no object and there was no barrier of time, how would you want to spend your money? I wanted to get inside their heads and understand how they drive consumption. Would you buy a car or a branded handbag or jewellery or house? A lot of people say that house is a priority, but we’ll rent a house, but we right now want to spend our money on travel.

So, when H&M happened, I was very clear that I wanted to create a very travel-inspired collection, but also a collection that you could travel with. So, there are a lot of gender-fluid pieces, lots of basics and mix-and-match. You could be in a big city like Paris and then move into a small resort in the south of France. So, we wanted to do a collection where you could mix and match horizontally and vertically to be able to upscale, downscale and create looks right for the day, evening, night and yet at the same time, they are basics. When you are a young customer, you don’t have that much money to shop but you make use of everything to create a very large wardrobe. So, we have everything. Shoes, jewellery, bags, sunglasses... depending on how smart you are, you can actually mix and match everything and create a very extensive wardrobe that does not burn a hole in your pocket.

I thought of this collection from my student days when I was fashion-forward, but I didn’t have enough money to buy. The democracy of fashion with the principles of good design... so that everybody can have something in their wardrobe.

Ki hoyechhe na... it’s become more relevant because one-and-a-half years we have not been able to travel, and you ask any one of us, what do you want to do... it’s travel.

Wanderlust looks wonderful. You have said: “Having done couture for the majority of my career, it is very exciting to bring that finesse of craft to ‘ready-to-wear’ and create whimsical and fluid silhouettes that bring relaxed sophistication to everyday life.” What was the difficult bit about this switch and what fell in place effortlessly?

I think it wasn’t difficult at all. H&M has such sophisticated machinery of production and I have to tell you there were two wants. I had said that the majority of production has to be in India. While a lot of the collection was made in India, I think what was exciting and it happened without any dissent... they asked me that if we were to give you one wish of what you would really like to keep in the collection, what would it be. I said it had to be a sari. It’s a primitive garment, but because of its primitiveness it is such a modern garment because everybody can interpret the sari in their own way. We have done a very young sari, inspired by the vestiges of Calcutta on the pallu. You can wear it with a T-shirt, a jacket. You can wear it over a pair of trousers with a belt. So, I wanted the sari to reach a certain kind of democracy with the young consumers and for me that was the biggest payback of this collection, that while the collection is very international, it has so many roots in India, especially very rooted in Calcutta. The sari is a modern homage to the modern laal-paar sari.

You have also said in your earlier interviews that it took six months for you “to create the artwork for this collection”. Tell us more about it because from whatever glimpse we had of it last year, it was breathtakingly languid-romantic...

India has been very famous for doing company paintings in... textiles and some of the artists are brilliant but undervalued as they haven’t been able to market themselves, which is why we started the art foundation (Sabyasachi Art Foundation) to give a position of pride and pedestal to artists who are impoverished.

My artists have been doing great collaborations like Pottery Barn... Christian Louboutin, projects for Thomas Goode and there are multiple more projects that are going to be announced, including a global collaboration that is coming up next. The art foundation has got its own identity. When you want to do something distinctive, the cheapest way to do something distinctive is a print. If the world has to know India, let it know India through its printed textiles. So, we have done Sanganeri prints, toile de Jouy, which is actually a French textile, but modified for Indian needs. We have taken modern versions of the kalamkari, the Coromandel chintz, tree of life and created something which is lush, bohemian, romantic, almost sensual but at the same time very Indian.

The name is so ironic! Wanderlust! At a time when we have to think so much before travelling...

Travel is timeless. It’s about topicality and timing. When we were designing the collection, who knew we would have a pandemic? And, how fitting it is that at a time when it is releasing, those who are going on responsible travels are wearing masks and going... going and sitting in a park is such a luxury and this collection celebrates the great outdoors. This collection looks the most magical and beautiful in sunlight, under open skies, and meadows. I have been a big fan of literature. Whether it was (John) Keats or (Henry Wadsworth) Longfellow, Christina Rossetti, (William) Wordsworth or for that matter (Rabindranath) Tagore... Gram chhara oi ranga maatir path... I will always love the great outdoors. Things that make me happy are the smell of the sea and open skies, sunshine, birds, trees, no pollution. When I was designing the collection, it was all inside my head. This is how we want to live... like free spirits. Wanderlust is the most important mantra in our lives.

Where did you travel in your mind with this collection?

Many cultural spots. When you find a global hippie or a nomad or a bohemian, they exist in different multiple pockets all over the world and they are a secret club that speak the same language, irrespective of the fact that they are separated by colour, race or gender, time and air miles. This collection could have been developed in Seville or Barcelona or New York or Marrakesh or Istanbul or Rio, Calcutta, Jaipur, London where tribes of people with layers and multilayers of society with fringe and mainstream exist together.

Do you have pieces that you love a wee bit more than the others?

Something that I think will become an instant hero is the indigo blue T-shirt with the Bengal tiger logo on it. I think a lot of people have wanted the logo on something. The Bengal tiger has become more famous than the name Sabyasachi right now. A lot of people tell me ki ‘woh animal dal dijiyega’. (Laughs) Ever since we started putting the tiger on the waistband of bridal lehngas, multiple brides have written to us who got their lehngas before, asking if they could return their lehngas and if we could put the tiger because they want to keep it for a lifetime.

I understand that a lot of people want the logo. So, for me, it was important to create a logo T-shirt for the youth who would probably have a first taste of the brand. It’s a very neutral colour. You can wear it with jeans or khakis. I think it’s a smart product and it will do very well. While I am excited about the sari, I am excited at the scale the T-shirt is going to sell.

We read somewhere that you have worked with denims for the first time...

I don’t think a modern wardrobe can be completed without adding denim because having a relaxed pair of jeans is such a wardrobe essential. It travels well. You can formally wear it with a white shirt or grunge with a T-shirt and a biker jacket. If there’s one thing that unifies all youth wardrobes, everybody has a pair of denims. How can you make a modern travel wardrobe without denims? It is the biggest accomplishment for a designer to have his denim line.

What does this collaboration mean for Indian fashion?

It means two things. It means the Indian consumer has come of age because of the fact that H&M has decided to do a collaboration with an Indian designer, which means they cannot ignore the Indian market.... This is the time when India takes ownership of its own identity.... I think in many ways what Priyanka Chopra is doing for the Indian film industry in the West, I also think this collaboration will give a lot of youth and younger children... and I don’t only mean in terms of fashion, I mean so many different verticals... when a big, global giant comes and does a collaboration where you get equal respect and positioning all over the world, a lot of people will dream that we do not have to only think of India as a market, but if we play our cards well, we can become a global market.

What was sweet justice for me was when H&M came, like how they asked me a few hard questions, I also asked them a few hard questions. I asked them why me? They said you have such a strong Indian identity and we wanted to work with India and someone who is India proud. I keep saying this to a lot of Indian students that the only way to be successful is to create a differentiated brand globally; to be proud of who you are and I think a lot of people will take confidence in being able to assert who they are and be comfortable about being Indian. That’s the only way to go forward.

You have the impossible quality of making fashion look both aspirational as well as for real. With this collaboration, you have just reinforced it again. A piece of Sabyasachi in every household. You have to tell us how you managed to get into the mind of the average Indian girl?

A friend of mine who is in publishing said something very poignant to me. She had gone to her chauffeur’s daughter’s wedding and the bride was wearing a Sabyasachi. She told me what is beautiful about the brand is that it is so well understood among different levels of diaspora. You have your Ambanis and Padukones and Chopras and then you have these people. Your design language is so aspirational that whenever they get a little bit of money, they want a piece of you because it makes them feel good about themselves.

Having said that, I’ll tell you why it is so. I was born middle class and when you are born middle class, you are always going to be middle class. Your economic situation might change and you might probably start living in better hotels and travelling in better cars, but your value systems don’t change. To spend 25 years of your life having only aspiration but no means to buy, it makes you realise two things. What do people really want in a product? They want timelessness, good value and relatability. I still get humbled by my mother’s sisters who will look at my clothes and say: ‘Ei ektu bol na eta ke pore? Kothai pore? Eto jori... ektu mone hoi theatre’r jama kapor!’

Still now?

They are confident in their dhonekhalis and tangails... they are super cultured and educated, whose sense of self don’t come from clothing and brands. It comes from what they do and who they are. For them body weight, make-up... these things don’t matter because they are secure about their identity and know that people love them for who they are.

So, I think there is a lot of grounding of being in Calcutta. I have an edge because I stay in Calcutta because it always keeps me rooted and I always have that little sense of practicality that drives commerce.

More than 20 years of running a business so successfully, when you are now the king, with an ‘empire’, what do you crave for the most?

Firstly, I want the world to get over this pandemic right now. It’s been too long. Right now I would pray for sunnier skies, safety and a sense of good mental health.

What is the top tip for anyone looking to be self-made?

You know, three words… just be yourself.

Ready reckoner

The collection launches globally across 48 online markets and also through physical stores in 17 markets

The collection will be available in physical stores in nine cities — Delhi, Ahmedabad, Gurgaon, Bangalore, Mohali, Chennai, Hyderabad, Noida and Lucknow — in India and to all on Hm.com and Myntra from 11am on August 12.

The collaboration comprises womenswear and menswear. There are around 65-70 articles, with 22 womenswear styles, 13 articles on menswear and 32 accessories. The price ranges from Rs 799 to Rs 9,999, for clothing and accessories