2 weeks ago
Sabyasachi teams with Met for Byzantine-inspired jewellery collaboration
A famous fashion designer named Sabyasachi makes beautiful clothes and jewellery.
He has made a new deal with a giant museum in New York called the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The museum has art and objects that are more than 5,000 years old.
Sabyasachi will look at those old objects to get ideas for new jewellery.
His first collection takes ideas from the Byzantine Empire, which was a powerful civilisation centred in Constantinople long ago.
The new jewellery will be shown for the first time in September at a big fashion event in New York.
He is not copying the old objects exactly.
Instead, he is making his own new versions using craft skills that are still practised in India.
The partnership will last for many years and might later include clothes and accessories too.
Sabyasachi Mukherjee has entered a multi-year partnership with the Metropolitan Museum of Art to create contemporary jewellery inspired by its 5,000-year collection.
The debut high jewellery collection, inspired by Byzantine Empire art and material culture, unveils September 15 during New York Fashion Week.
The designer is reinterpreting Met holdings such as imperial medallions, architectural ornamentation, statuary and religious iconography through India's craft traditions.
Met retail and licensing head Stephen Mannello framed the partnership as a way to view the museum's antiquities through a contemporary lens.
Future chapters of the collaboration are expected to expand beyond jewellery into accessories and clothing.
- Who
- Sabyasachi Mukherjee, an Indian fashion designer, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
- What
- A multi-year collaboration creating contemporary high jewellery inspired by the Met's collection spanning more than 5,000 years of art.
- Where
- New York, drawing on the Met's Greek and Roman, Medieval, and Islamic art collections alongside New York Fashion Week.
- When
- Debuting September 15 during New York Fashion Week this September.
- Why
- To reinterpret the museum's antiquities through a contemporary lens and showcase Indian craft traditions, which the designer says remain among the few still actively practised.
Key facts
- Partnership
- Multi-year collaboration between Sabyasachi and the Metropolitan Museum of Art
- Debut collection
- High jewellery inspired by Byzantine Empire art and material culture
- Launch date
- September 15, during New York Fashion Week
- Source material
- Met's collection spanning more than 5,000 years of art and culture
- Byzantine period
- 4th to 15th centuries, centred in Constantinople
- Met departments used
- Greek and Roman, Medieval, and Islamic art
- Future plans
- Expansion beyond jewellery into accessories and clothing
- Met representative
- Stephen Mannello, head of retail and global licensing








