Sabyasachi Mukherjee is being schooled by Twitter (again!) for identifying ‘overdressed women’ as ‘wounded’. A celebrated designer in his own right, Sabyasachi put out a strangely-worded post, where he calls any woman who ‘cakes her face with make-up, or armours herself with jewelry’ as an indicator for her ‘bleeding silently’. He then goes on to say that with the help of make up and jewelry, women ‘hold on to their pride and dignity’ to overcome ‘the dark, blinding pain’ within them.
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Even though Sabyasachi’s final message is that of love and empathy, the message got curiously lost in translation. The Twitter rage got to the point, where Sabyasachi was forced to offer an apology and clarification, that made little sense.
Sabyasachi’s apology/clarification
Taking full responsibility for the statement being put out on his Instagram, Sabyasachi extended his unconditional apology and confessed to the message not being articulated perfectly. He even went so far to clarify by saying that while coping with ‘crippling depression’ for seven years, he found his out in radical dress choices. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but at the end of his clarification, Sabyasachi does concede that his team got a bit ‘overzealous about a cause he was passionate about’ and hence became tone-deaf in the way it was worded.
Been There, Done That
This isn’t the first time Sabyasachi is in the eye of a storm, for a controversial statement. Only last year, he’d rattled a few cages by saying that if an Indian woman didn’t know how to wear a saree, they should be ashamed of it. He was taking part in a Harvard India conference where he was asked about the taboo surrounding ‘sarees’ for young Indian women, to which he responded by saying – “I think, if you tell me that you do not know how to wear a saree, I would say shame on you. It’s a part of your culture, (you) need to stand up for it.”
The designer got plenty of backlash for that too, which wasn’t entirely dissimilar to the current situation. In a world that already has plenty of outrage, here’s hoping Sabyasachi will be more careful and introspective about his ‘two cents’ on matters in the future.
