New Delhi: Sabyasachi Mukherjee returned to New York Fashion Week with his Spring/Summer 2027 collection. The Bengal Byzantine Broadway collection debuted on 15 September, marking the Indian designer’s return to fashion’s biggest week since 2009.
Mukherjee even had supermodel Christy Turlington come out of retirement to open the 72-look show in a denim-on-denim look. The 57-year-old also featured in Sabyasachi’s 25th anniversary show in Mumbai in January 2025, where she closed the show in black and white, layered with necklaces, cuffs and other jewellery.
The New York collection looked very different from the saris, lehengas and bridalwear Sabyasachi is best known for. The couturier from Kolkata showed a fusion of Indian and Western elements. The latest collection had blue jeans, plaid shirts, denim vests, cowboy hats and long coats, alongside bags, jewellery and plenty of embellishment, showcasing a much more casual look than his signature formal pieces.
The Indian elements were often in the details. Coats were hand-beaded, jackets had hand-quilted linings, and one was covered in cow-print patches made from embroidered tulle.
“For me, it’s a perfect amalgamation of Americana and Indian (craft),” Sabyasachi told Elle backstage before the show.
He also spoke about the expectation that Indian fashion has to look recognisably desi.
“I think that India is not a land of elephants and peacocks,” he said, pointing instead to a country where history and craft exist alongside technology, medicine and contemporary life.
Diet Prada put it more simply: “Sabyasachi’s got the whole world in his hands.”
It described the collection as “global glam”, with an Indian fashion house taking the visual language of Western luxury, filtering it through its own cultural history and sending it back out into the world. There were references to American preppy dressing and late-20th-century European fashion, but with Sabyasachi’s embroidery, handwork and jewellery running through them.
When Bengal Byzantine Broadway met Bollywood
The name Bengal Byzantine Broadway brings together the collection’s different references.
“Bengal is the cultural lens, Byzantine provides this extraordinary history of convergence, and Broadway brings the story into the present,” Sabyasachi told Vogue.
The Byzantine influence is clearest in the jewellery. The show marked the runway debut of Sabyasachi’s multi-year high-jewellery collaboration with New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. The pieces draw on objects and histories in The Met’s collections and reinterpret them through jewellery designed and made in India.
They include Byzantine-inspired cuffs, pendants drawing from ancient Mediterranean jewellery and a necklace inspired by Mughal emperor Jahangir’s zodiac coins. Diet Prada noted that Sabyasachi is the first Indian designer to enter this kind of partnership with the museum.
There were familiar faces off the runway too. Indian actor Rani Mukerji and Never Have I Ever (2020-2023) actor Poorna Jagannathan posed together at the show.
The actor’s relationship with Sabyasachi goes back years. In a video shared by Diet Sabya, the Indian counterpart to the international fashion watchdog Diet Prada, the 52-year-old designer said that he generally does not make custom clothes for Bollywood, but made an exception for her.
“I don’t think Rani’s Bollywood; she’s family,” he said. Mukerji also attended his first New York show and, according to Sabyasachi, has been at all his store openings. He revealed that he had told her he would not do Tuesday’s show unless she came.
Mukerji was equally effusive.
“I love him. I love his work. I love him, and I love his art,” she said.
The New York show also comes after several years of Sabyasachi building a larger presence in the United States. He opened his New York flagship store in 2022, and the label is now sold through retailers including Bergdorf Goodman and Saks Fifth Avenue. The business has also expanded beyond clothing into jewellery, handbags and eyewear.
(Edited by Insha Jalil Waziri)