If you were meeting a designer of Sabyasachi Mukherjee's calibre for the first time, you would, like me, expect to meet a man with a certain aura about him. But thanks to his modest personality, the designer was hard to spot at a recent trunk show held at The Fairmont Dubai.
Indeed, if it wasn't for a helpful PR person who pointed him out to me, I would have mistaken him for a regular shopper.
Still, Mukherjee is a name to reckon with. He has helped transform the images of many Bollywood stars and also helped create the looks in recent films such as Sanjay Leela Bhansali's Guzaarish, Mani Ratnam's Raavan and Balki's Paa.
With very strong traditional overtures and undercurrents in his Indian and Western collections, Mukherjee's client list boasts names such as Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Abhishek Bachchan, Rani Mukherjee and Vidya Balan, who swear by him.
But it's not just the stars that Sabyasachi has swooning over his clothes. Falguni Mehta, a jewellery designer, said at the trunk show she wore Sabyasachi because the clothes "were very traditional, timeless and therefore were a statement in their own right". Poonam Chopra, a Dubai-based businesswoman finds his designs "very wearable".
tabloid! spoke to him at the show.
A similar sale last year sold out in a matter of hours. What do you have in store for us this time round?
The Kanjivaram sari is the highlight of this show. Some styles are old classics that have not been woven since the '60s, especially the three-part loom saris. I've revived these and added the signature Sabyasachi borders so they become trousseau collectables.
Apart from these, are the Guzaarish-inspired maxis that Aishwarya wore in the film. We are expecting to see a very strong '70s revival in the next few months so I think it's the right time to get a maxi.
Q. Your collection has mainly formal wear. You do design casual wear?
Yes of course, but bringing casuals to Dubai makes no sense. My clothes are ethnic and if they are Western, they are borderline ethnic. If you see the Dubai clothing culture you'll find most people in casual Westerns and I'm not here to compete with a Chanel or a Prada. I'm here to create a niche of my own.
To get something that is completely hand-crafted and hand-stitched and something that has antiquity value is what's missing from Dubai's retail sector. So it's probably finding the missing spice in the spice rack and just delivering it.
Q. What inspires you to design individually for a client?
I think it's their personalities. You know when you are dressing up a star, it's important to know who the star is, what she wants and what are her deliverables. Aishwarya has always looked good in Indian clothes, whether it's Bhansali's Devdas or Ratnam's Guru. She is more traditionalist, but glamorous. Rani Mukherjee is sassy, sexy and bohemian while Vidya is a purist. Vidya's quite detached from fashion, so with her I try to not to go too flashy and keep it conservative, quieter and elegant, and that's how she is in real life too.
Why these girls keep coming back to me is because I give them a cosmopolitan feel about themselves yet make sure they are rooted in Indian tradition. So dressing up a star is like dressing up a character in a film. You cannot homogenise stars. You have to create different niches for them.
Who is easier to design for — men or women?
"It's women, because the canvas is much larger, there's so much more to do," says Sabyasachi Mukherjee. "I've seen that men are fussier than women, because there's so little available for them. They will nit-pick about why this part of the shirt is smaller than that part by 0.5 centimetres. How do you argue with that logic?
"But with women, you give them something pretty and maybe part of the garment is not finished they'll tell you, ‘It's fine — I don't have time, so don't fuss. I need to wear it tomorrow.'
"Of course there are exceptions, but by and large I feel women are easier to design for."
Styling tip
"The most important thing to do is to firstly be comfortable with who you are and your body. You'll look fat if you feel fat. Your confidence brings about a sexiness that probably you are not aware of. And even if on a bad day you wear a smile, it's the best garment."
