On the Guest List of Sabyasachi’s New York Fashion Week Party? 100 Life-Sized Elephant Sculptures

Carolina Herrera, Sabyasachi MukherjeeHannah Turner Harts/BFA.com

Follow the migratory herd of elephants down New York’s 9th Avenue, through the Meatpacking district, and you’ll come upon a tall tusker elephant on Christopher Street. If you didn’t know any better, you could be wandering the forests of India with all of these elegant Asian elephants. But these 100 decorative life-sized pachyderms are actually part of a cross-country installation called The Great Elephant Migration, imagined by Ruth Ganesh and Elephant Family organization to promote symbiotic coexistence among humans and wildlife. In celebration of their arrival in New York City, Sabyasachi Mukherjee threw an opulent fashion week fête that gave the fashion set a glorious glimpse into a grand night out in Kolkata.

Sabyasachi’s West Village store is a feast for the eyes on any day, with an exquisite “more is more” aesthetic. The Indian brand’s couture dresses, suits, and splendid accessories are luxurious on their own, but the impeccably designed store transforms visitors into a lavish world of Sabyasachi’s resplendent imagination. To celebrate The Great Elephant Migration, Sabyasachi turned up the splendor volume even more, even curating his own swanky cocktail party music. Staff in chic Sabyasachi turbans served abundant hors d oeuvres, caviar, and Dom Perignon champagne, all gloriously enjoyed by guests in attendance. The pièce de résistance was a decadent dessert tablescape of your dreams, laden with tiered-cakes, tarts, sugared fruits, animal-shaped cookies, and bonbons. Hidden among the sweets, fruits, silver accessories, and dense foliage was a baby elephant sculpture from The Great Elephant Migration.

Sabyasachi Mukherjee, himself an animal lover with ten dogs back home in Kolkata, told Vogue, “Elephant Family told me about their purpose of trying to create safe animal corridors where animals can migrate from one forest to another in search of greener pastures and better food, without disrupting human habitats and without human habitats encroaching on theirs. It is a wonderful example of human-animal coexistence.”

Throughout the night, guests stopped by the Sabyasachi store on safari-esque expeditions to view the elephant exhibition. Sabyasachi was joined by a bevy of his fashionable friends to celebrate the cause, including Ayesha Shand wearing Sabyasachi, Martha Stewart wearing Thom Browne, and Jessel Taank wearing Zimmerman. Many fashion notables attended, including Carolina Herrera, Maxwell Osborne, Jonathan Cohen, Peter Som, Waris Ahluwalia, Nina Garcia, Fern Mallis, Mickey Boardman, and Hannah Bronfman.

The 100 elephant sculptures, which are for sale and were beautifully crafted in India by an Indigenous artisan group called the Coexistence Collective, remain on view in New York City through October 20th, then move to Miami in December, followed by an ongoing American tour next year. “We want to emotionally move people. We want people to feel a sense of awe and wonder and connection with what the elephants represent, and really believe the environmental crisis is a crisis of relationship between humans and animals. People form a relationship with the herd once they understand the story,” Ruth Ganesh told Vogue.