VERNISSAGE

“IF LUXURY IS ABOUT

INTIMIDATION, HOW DO YOU INTIMIDATE THE RICH? YOU CAN INTIMIDATE THEM WITH CULTURE.”

SABYASACHI MUKHERJEE

THE TREASURE PRINCIPLE Above: Sabyasachi Mukherjee’s new Manhattan store; inset, a deconstructed maharani necklace. Facing page: one of the designer’s signature embroidered coats.

The Maximalist

Slip through an obscure door on Christopher Street into the new store of the Indian fashion designer Sabyasachi Mukherjee and, like the wardrobe in Narnia, you enter a spellbinding parallel world. Chandeliers dripping in crystals hang above gilded oil portraits of Indian nobility. Ornate antique glass cases are filled with glinting jewelry. Dark mahogany racks hold intricately beaded overcoats, signature saris, and dazzling, heavily embroidered jackets. A sweet smell of jasmine wafts through the air. The

West Village fashion emporium is Sabyasachi’s first in America—5,800 square feet of style-driven stimuli that evokes the sensory associations and glamour of his homeland’s heritage.

“A lot of fashion has become cookie cutter and luxury customers are getting fed up,” the 49-yearold Mukherjee explains one recent morning at his boutique as he sips tea from a porcelain cup presented by an elegant man in a Nehru jacket and turban. “I’m a complete minimalist when it comes to my personal life, but I’m a complete maximalist when it comes to my professional life. And I don't mix the two.” Dubbed the “Indian Ralph Lauren” by The New York Times, his mission is to transport his clientele to his homeland of India. “I saw the opportunity to break into the U.S. because the American people are willing to take risks and express themselves in ways culturally that were alien to them before.”

Most of the designer’s loyal clientele live in the Middle East and Asia, where he dresses Bollywood’s stars, and he has five Sabyasachi stores in India—but the label is growing here (devotees include Priyanka Chopra, who wore his red sari when she married Nick Jonas). The New York shop is projected to make $35 million in revenue this year, with an average spend of $15,000 a transaction. “If the movie industry is a mirror of what’s going to happen here, I think America has become a lot more receptive to newer cultures than ever before,” he reasons, then ponders: “If luxury is about intimidation, how do you intimidate the rich? You can intimidate them with culture. When I got my first store, I said that it needs to be 70 percent experience and 30 percent retail. I think India is going to become a very irresistible market to the West.”

Mukherjee was raised in Chandannagar in West Bengal and now lives in Kolkata, where he employs 500 full-time staff and more than 1,000 artisans to take care of the beading, tanning, weaving, and the famous embroidery the label is known for. Some pieces can take up to six months to complete. And, like Ralph Lauren, Mukherjee is building his fashion empire into a complete lifestyle for the (very rich) modern bohemian, with jewelry, wallpaper, and home goods, and a beauty line in the works.

Mukherjee, who eschews fashion week shows, preferring instead to “drop” his collections on Instagram, tells Avenue, “We have a philosophy in India that says the core should always be more important than the periphery. When you build something beautiful, you let people find it.” —peter davis

WITHIN MINUTES, FIVE OF THE $150,000

LIMITED-EDITION “BÄUMER” BOTTLES WERE SOLD.

bottle commanded $628,000 on the block at Sotheby’s in Hong Kong in 2014.

Among the most recent covetables to be offered is the “Bäumer” from Hennessy’s “Editions Rares” collection. The carafe—designed by Place Vendôme jeweler Lorenz Bäumer in collaboration with Baccarat—has been issued in an edition of 75 in celebration of the 75th anniversary of the NBA. The 1.75-liter spherical decanter, topped up with Hennessy Paradis cognac, comes tucked inside an orange leather case embellished with gold markings that evince the lines on a basketball. The hand-faceted bottle comes with two balloon glasses, an arced fusil, and a golden key that opens both the carafe and the coffret, further enhancing its jewel-box design. “Creating a piece on such a large scale increases all the difficulties tenfold,” Bäumer tells Avenue. “Our quest for excellence sometimes has us destroy works that don’t live up to our expectations. I became very excited with using all the knowledge that I gained by cutting precious gems to maximize the play of light within the Baccarat crystal and the cognac—cognac that becomes a precious gem set in crystal.”

As part of its marketing scheme for the basketball-inspired bottles, Hennessy lured a group of private clients who jetted in from New York, San Francisco, Miami, and Europe for the unveiling of the “Bäumer” collectors’ edition at a private dinner at the Amangiri resort in Utah. Within minutes, five of the $150,000 limited-edition bottles were sold, followed by a very expensive toast. Talk about a slam dunk. — peter davis

Lush Life

When money is no object, what objets are the deep-pocketed acquiring? Enter the latest fetish for the wealthy: a limited-edition liquor bottle that can cost between $150,000 to $3.5 million a pop— C2H5OH not included.

As with, say, a Basquiat, these rarefied decanters come with their own coterie of special dealers, who tend the coveted vessels to discerning collectors demanding the best while maintaining personal anonymity. Among the quarry: a 2010 seashell-inspired “Pasión Azteca” bottle by Tequila Ley, a platinum and white gold bottle adorned with 6,400 diamonds tagged for $3.5 million that just might contain four-year-old añejo tequila; or Yayoi Kusama’s resin-and-copper floral sculpture that cloaks a magnum of Veuve Clicquot’s “La Grande Dame.” The latter, issued in a limited edition of 100, sold out in minutes in 2020, offered through Moët Hennessy’s private sales division. Since then, editioned Kusama bottles have been popping up at galleries and auction houses carrying estimates ranging from $300,000 to $500,000, despite being drained of their original bubbly. Over the past decade, the secondary market has become quite spirited when it comes to such collectibles, as evidenced by a Macallan “M” single malt six-liter Imperiale whiskey, housed in a 28-inchtall Lalique crystal decanter—the largest Lalique has ever made. Offered in an edition of four, the

MULHEARN

WANTS US TO FIND MEANING IN THE BACK STORIES OF WHO WORE WHAT TO THE OSCARS— OR DIDN’T.

Red Carpet Reader

AMAZING GRACE Grace Kelly collects her Oscar for The Country Girl wearing the iconic Edith Head-designed ice-blue French satin gown in 1955.

Bernadine Morris, the esteemed 20th-century fashion critic, said she covered fashion the same way her (mostly male) colleagues covered sports. Today, fashion, like sports, has become an integral part of the entertainment landscape, and the

Academy Awards are the Super Bowl of fashion.

Bolstered by millions of viewers from every medium, the Oscars have become a fun fishbowl, at least for us, the audience. We get to look and cast our own votes. Will certain entertainers draw the limelight on the red carpet (like Sharon

Stone in her Gap T-shirt or Uma Thurman, who changed Oscar fashion in ethereal Prada), or will they end up in a heap of defeat, as was the public consensus on Demi Moore’s self-styled biker shorts in 1989 and Björk’s 2001 “swan dress”?

It’s a worthy topic for exploration, and in her door stopper of a book, Red Carpet Oscars, published by Thames & Hudson just before the awards season crescendos with the Oscars in March, Dijanna Mulhearn takes it all on with a marathoner’s tenacity. Boasting more than 1,000 photographs, it opens with Janet Gaynor, best actress at the inaugural Academy Awards in 1929, who showed up in a modest sweater with a scalloped Peter Pan collar, and goes on to give a playby-play of each year since then. Giorgio Armani, an architect of the modern red carpet game, reflects on Oscar style in the form of a letter, and the foreword is by Cate Blanchett. “In the time I’ve spent walking/white-knuckling,” she writes, “the focus on red carpet fashion has become increasingly forensic and the number of associated businesses that ride its slipstream has mushroomed.”

That’s one of only two style-related developments at the Oscars that has notably changed: such is the power of the red carpet that brands now pay directly or indirectly to have celebrities wear their clothes. The other change, in part spurring this trend, is the ascendancy of stylists (in 2022, the Council of Fashion Designers of America added a stylist category to its annual awards).

On fascinating close inspection, though, Red Carpet Oscars shows that not much has really changed. As early as the ’30s, the Oscars called on designers to help dress celebrities as glamorously as possible, igniting media coverage and shopping frenzies that turned wearing the right look into a way a celebrity could burnish their brand.

Mulhearn wants us to find meaning in the backstories of who wore what—or didn’t. She recounts how, just hours before the Oscars in 2013, Valentino issued a press release announcing that Anne Hathaway—who was nominated for, and would later win, best supporting actress—would be wearing a gown by the designer. She did not. But, in the end, does the public really care about whether or not she wore Valentino that night? Either way, it adds fascinating detail to Hollywood’s biggest night.

Red Carpet Oscars is a great way to enrich your TV viewing pleasure, or an Oscar party. Sometimes, context matters. But often, as this book illustrates, it’s all about a beautiful dress. —constance c.r. White