Estee Lauder Sabyasachi Mukherjee Lipstick Collaboration

Indian designer Sabyasachi Mukherjee is best known for his genre-defining bridalwear, the product of an incredibly distinct vision and an eye for impeccable craftsmanship, beauty, and color. His designs are imbued with layers upon layer of influences, pulled from his encyclopedic knowledge of literature, film, and pop culture—and then run through his own viewfinder, tinged with faded opulence and wistful nostalgia—with a rich vein of his family’s Calcuttan heritage running through it all. The result is pieces that exude timelessness, yet tap into the now. Over the years, Mukherjee has expanded his business to include jewelry and accessories, and has also branched out into eyewear and into the home space with various collaborations. Now, beauty joins the Sabyasachi brand’s very in-demand offerings.

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A limited-edition collaboration with Estée Lauder, consisting of 10 satin matte and ultra-matte lipsticks, goes live March 4. The bullets come in black lacquer cases with 24-karat gold-plated accents and engraved with Sabyasachi’s trademark Bengal tiger.

When Mukherjee visited the Lauder archives at the very start of the partnership, he felt a certain kinship with the cosmetics brand’s visionary founder. “The archives were filled with objects of art; there was an exuberance of design and something brilliantly idealistic and artistic in the way it all came together,” the designer tells Bazaar via email. “This wasn’t just packaging—they were memory boxes and mementos.” Those artifacts inspired the new lipstick collection. Like many of his projects, this one is an attempt to recapture the elegance of an earlier era, when everyday objects were meticulously crafted, created with intention, and cherished for longer than a single trend cycle.

A look at the tube for Sabyasachi and Estée Lauder’s new lipstick collection

Hitting the right color notes in the lipstick tones was also important, as Mukherjee wanted to “create timeless shades that stood on the great divide between modernity and nostalgia.” His aim was to solve an issue that his clients, who are primarily brown women, often face: finding color cosmetics with the right undertones. “I know how women have struggled to find the perfect shade of red because the underlying hue doesn’t have the right blue or brown,” he says.

Mukherjee’s eye has always been sensitive to color, thanks to his mother, who gave up an art career for the family’s financial stability. “My eye sees and processes color differently—with an abundance of joy and tinged with wistful melancholia, [which] probably comes from the city I call home, Calcutta,” he writes. The designer says inspirations for the 10 new lipstick shades were myriad, ranging from Marilyn Monroe to Madonna, the work of 19th-century British landscape painter John Constable, the colors of Indian silks and brocades, the effervescence of gemstones, and the limestone-washed walls of Rajasthan, in northern India. “I interpret color through the literal, metaphysical, and fantastical.”

Mukherjee worked in collaboration with Estée Lauder product development to curate the shades by picking threads from his designs. The colors work on a broad range of skin tones, and Mukherjee chose shade names that tie back to India.

Even how they smell was carefully considered. “Sabyasachi wanted the lipsticks to be scented, and specifically chose a fragrance that connects to nostalgic personal memories: spicy cinnamon and clove are wrapped with warming, unctuous notes of buttery brown sugar and vanilla,” says Erica Kwok, Estée Lauder senior vice president, global marketing.

Beauty has been an enduring obsession for the designer, who in his younger years served as the unofficial makeup and hair artist for the women in his family, under his mother’s watchful tutelage, and then graduated to being in charge of hair and makeup for school plays and the various street theater groups he worked with.Mukherjee’s earliest memory of beauty is that of his maternal grandmother’s emerald hoop earrings, lavish brocade saris, and red mouth, stained that way by the paan or betel leaf she chewed on. “I never have to travel too far or wide to find beauty. It’s in the everyday observation of people,” he says.

The fashion and beauty communities have been eager to see what Mukherjee will do in the cosmetics space because his vibe lends itself to a distinct look (he previously collaborated with L’Oréal Paris back in 2018.) “The idea of Sabyasachi beauty has iconic status in India, and I think it comes from the consistency of the image of the Sabyasachi woman. Even Bollywood stars who wear Sabyasachi style themselves with the center-parted hair, kohl-rimmed eyes, and either the nude or red lip,” he says. To Western ears, Mukherjee may sound like he might be overstating his influence on South Asian fashion, but it’s the unvarnished truth.

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As a creative exercise, Bazaar asked Mukherjee to imagine his lipstick collection on celebrated women, and he came ready to play. Taylor Swift gets Calcutta Red, he say, since “she’s made the red lip iconic again.” Bombay Berry is for Bollywood megastar Rekha, for “an iconic, mysterious, and sultry pout.” Frida Kahlo gets paired with Coffee Masala because “it’s such a strong, almost primal color that it is deserving of someone as strong and confident as” the Mexican painter. Cinema legend Sophia Loren embodies Devi Pink since “it’s the right mix of playful-but-luscious womanhood” and Tropical Tangerine, a juicy terra-cotta, goes to vocal sensation Donna Summer, “because it reminds me of ’70s disco glamour.”

As for the future, the Indian designer hints that the lipsticks might not be the last we see of Sabyasachi beauty. “In a country whose idea of beauty and wellness has been celebrated over centuries, I find it shocking that we haven’t created a global luxury beauty brand,” he says. “I intend to change this narrative; I believe our time has come.”

The Estée Lauder x Sabyasachi Collection will be available for a limited time at Bergdorf Goodman, select Estée Lauder counters, and esteelauder.com beginning March 4.