‘It took me over four-five years to collect all the artefacts': Sabyasachi takes us on a tour of his ‘opulent' Delhi store

Indian Express

2 days ago

Step into Sabyasachi Mukherjee's flagship store in Delhi, and you're stepping into something much more than a boutique. It took almost nine months to bring the store to life from its design phase, but it was a commitment that spanned half a decade for the designer himself.
'It took me about over four and a half, five years to collect all the art artefacts that went into putting the store. It was quite a labour of love. It took a lot of time. I was supposed to open the store in November 2015, but I wasn't very happy with the outcome of the store, so I delayed it until March 2016. Paid a lot of rent, but I'm happy that it eventually came out the way I envisioned it to be,' Sabyasachi once told Mint in an interview.
This isn't just a space to shop; it's an immersive experience. Every inch of the store—housed in a colonial-style mansion in Delhi's Mehrauli district—tells a story, rich in the unmistakable touch of Sabyasachi's India-proud design.
'Firstly, it's a very opulent store and it's a very large store. But, you know, we have kept the clutter in such a way that it does not intimidate you. It's a cosy clutter,' the designer says.
The store was crafted to talk about more than couture: 'I also think that it's very important for us to talk about the real story of India, which is not in the craft story. I think the idea is for people to feel very, very nostalgic and to feel very India proud.'
The space is filled with artefacts that Sabyasachi himself hunted across the country and beyond. Some were found in the Muslim parties of Calcutta, others in the chaotic treasures of Chor Bazaar, Ferozabad, and even in Puton in Italy.
'It's a miracle that we got so many. I had to hunt them from, you know, the Muslim parties of Calcutta, then some came from Chor Bazaar, a lot of them came from Ferozabad, some from Puton, Italy, a little bit from Lucknow. We started sending our teams to get as much as we could because, you know, finding old attar bottles can be quite taxing because the new ones come with modern shapes.'
The store's design is emotionally tuned: the use of faded carpets, aged walls, vintage Portuguese and Dutch plates, antique mirrors, and sepia-toned photographs evokes a curated nostalgia.
'We have created different sorts of hues on the wall with faded carpets which look like they're, you know, they've been touched by the age of patina. There were a lot of distressed photographs too — portraits from the 1940s to the 1960s — which were retouched by Fuji colour and hand by my art foundation.'
'Then we had a lot of Tanjores, old antique mirrors, photographs from my campaigns, Dutch plates, old wall furniture fittings, beautiful pottery, crockery — a lot of Portuguese and Dutch plate styles.'
This eclectic mix, Sabyasachi said, is intentional — aiming to surprise at every corner while evoking a sense of cultural memory.