One Day in the life of Fashion Designer Sabyasachi Mukherjee

Taken from below link
http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/day-in-life-sabyasachi-mukherjee-fashion-designer-routine-wedding-couture/1/494519.html

5:30 a.m. I wake up in installments. First, around 5:30-6:00 a.m., and then I'm somewhat awake by 7:00 a.m. I can't wake up instantly, unless I have the pressure of a show or something. I wait for my morning tea. I only fully wake up after I've had my tea and biscuits. My body is my alarm, so I don't need to set one. With tea, I read the newspapers. Fashion can be a very myopic industry where people have no clue about what's happening in the outside world. So I like to keep myself informed beyond my work. It does not necessarily have anything to do with design. But somewhere down the line it always helps, because if you're designing for people, you need to understand society at large and where it's heading. When I'm in Kolkata, I read The Telegraph, otherwise The Times of India or The Hindustan Times. And a bit of The Economic Times. In New York, it's The New York Times, and in London I take the International Herald Tribune. After I'm finished, I step out onto my terrace garden. Then I do a little mindless pitter-pattering around.

8:30 a.m. Breakfast is a bowl of fruits, upma, a glass of juice, and a vitamin tablet. It doesn't vary much, because I prefer my breakfast to be a definite routine. After this, I take a very long, indulgent bath that goes on sometimes for 35-40 minutes. That's my private space. I actually take very long meditative showers. I experiment a lot with bath products because to me fragrance is very important. If I'm in the South of France, I'll carry a lot of lavender bath products back from there. Otherwise, I like products that have a lot of sandalwood, rose oil, mogra (jasmine), and I like organic Indian products. But my favourite bath products are from Kerala Ayurveda. Sometimes I use a scrub or a soap. Bath products make me happy because I'm a very sensory person, and good smells really stimulate my mind.

9:15 a.m. I'm out of the house, into my car. On the way to the factory, I'm on the phone. All my assistants are on WhatsApp groups. There are different WhatsApp groups that I've created. There's a design group, a production group, an HR group, a finance group... about 16 in all. They send daily reports to me the night before. So the next morning-the drive takes about 35-45 minutes in traffic-I send out different tasks to everybody on different groups. My work starts the moment I sit in the car.

10:00 a.m. My office people have to set prior appointments with my assistant. So the whole day is spent in a lot of problem solving. We have various kinds of meetings. Some days we have multiple meetings, and some days we have meetings that last the entire day. When I do design meetings, I get very irritable. I don't want anybody to disturb me. Something that really annoys me is when my retail team requests me to meet a customer. It's something that I hate, absolutely hate, because I don't like taking private appointments. I used to when I started, but now I don't need to. My staff is quite well trained. There is nothing that you can get out of me that you can't get out of my staff. On days I want to design, my assistant's job is to shoo off everybody else.

1:00 p.m. I always have a working lunch, and have no memories of it. I'm a foodie and I love to eat, but when I'm at work, my lunch is so transient that I don't even remember it. It's always light, as I don't like to be weighed down by heavy food. Everybody knows that I like to eat, so food comes from the canteen in the factory, my assistants' houses, my house, my mother's house. There's a lot of food around.

2:00 p.m. I like to do walk-throughs because I like to surprise the people in my different factories. I have an eagle eye, and two at the back of my head, so I know everything that's going on in my organisation. I'll go to the printing department, or the embroidery department, or I will go look at the art foundation that my sister and I are involved with, for which a new building is being made. There are multiple factories. But they're all side by side, so navigation-wise it's quite easy. The good thing is that none of my factories have elevators, except the new one that houses the accounts team. For me, it's the only form of exercise: Walking up and down four flights of stairs.

4:00 p.m. Chai time is actually quite free flowing. It's constantly happening as everybody has access to tea and coffee. There's no real chai time.

10:00 p.m. If I'm very early to work, I wrap up by 10:00 p.m. Normally, I wrap up by 11:30 p.m. I work 365 days a year. Everybody sends me their work reports by 7:30-8:00 in the evening, and while I'm in the car, I read them all and make mental notes about them for the next day. So my workday begins and ends in the car.

11:30 p.m. Once I reach home, I do nothing. I don't listen to music, I don't read books, I don't watch television, I don't talk to people, I'm not on the phone and not on the Internet. I just keep quiet and I have a silent meal all by myself. I unwind and normally take a bath. I just walk around my room and try not to entertain any thoughts. This is when I get into a meditative state. I've started this practice of Vipassana, which I do without actually doing it. Basically, it's a time of renouncement, as I haven't done a formal course on it. I think people need to do such courses when they don't listen to their bodies. Once you start training yourself to listen to what your body really wants, you follow it. After a whole day of clutter and noise and talking to people, your body just needs silence and a little bit of peace.

12:30 a.m. I try to go to sleep by 12:00-12:30, latest by 12:45. On days I come home early, I try to sleep by 10:30 p.m. I love my sleep. It is my greatest indulgence. I can sleep anywhere. Even if I'm flying economy for six hours, and I'm seated between two people. My friends say it's exhaustion and not a blessing, but I feel childishly happy when I see a beautifully made bed where I can wear my favourite boxer shorts and T-shirt. My bed, anywhere, is my refuge. In Kolkata, my bedroom is very sparse. It has a simple Burma teak bed, absolutely no clutter, a sofa next to it, and it opens up to my terrace garden. So when I wake up, sunlight streams into my bedroom, and I see beautiful plants all over the garden. Just before I sleep, my ritual is to open the curtains a little. That way, I get to see the aura of the city lights and a little bit of my terrace garden. I like the sanctuary-like quality of the stillness of the night.