Twenty years ago, Sabyasachi Mukherjee went to New York with a collection called ‘Snail’, a move perversely quiet for a designer known for bohemia and handcraft: school uniforms, maternity wear, clean shapes, cotton and restrained embroidery, arguing for slowing down in an age of mass production. New York Fashion Week, he thought, would be the start of something; instead, it became a lesson in timing. His own account is blunt: too ambitious, too little power. He promised himself he’d return when the time was right.

On Tuesday afternoon, he did. American supermodel Christy Turlington opened ‘Bengal Byzantine Broadway’ in a denim-on-denim Canadian tuxedo, wearing high jewellery, a sly pairing of the everyday and the spectacular. A gold cuff set with garnet and tourmaline cabochons, its form borrowed from a third-century Roman sarcophagus, moved up and down her wrist. A Byzantine animal panel elsewhere became a tiger-claw necklace, brown diamonds catching the light with each step. Museum objects acquired bodies, gestures and attitude.

Christy Turlington for Sabyasachi Mukherjee

| Video Credit: The Hindu