An everyday escape into the extraordinary, Essgee envisions a luxury bohemian aesthetic with versatile pieces that take you from city to beach, work to vacation.
“It’s a fresh take on resort wear, which is not just limited to be worn on vacations but can be a part of your daily lifestyle as well,” says founder Sagrika Grover, who flagged off the brand in 2018 at the age of 21. The brand name stems from the founder’s initials—Essgee for Sagrika Grover.
Talking about her new Spring Summer 2020 collection, No/Sane, Sagrika says, “Launching a new collection in the midst of a worldwide pandemic was a difficult decision. But we have taken an optimistic approach on how the world will change for the better. Also, we are hopeful that being on the move will once again take us back to sanity. The vibrant energy of this capsule will be a help.”
Befitting for the nomadic soul, it articulates the essence of the season through its free-flowing range of ensembles.
Encapsulating the sweet harmony of bohemia and nomadic romance, the collection is adorned with the infusion of art through its embroideries, fabric dying, trims and more.
Laden in comfortable yet chic fabrics including cotton net, jacquard viscose, viscose silk, tencel, flex, chiffon and modal, the pieces hold within their silhouettes the dream of an endless summer.
“The millennials’s current obsession with travel is very similar to the nomadic way of living, which inspired this capsule to great depths,” she says.
Coming from a family of garment exporters, it was perhaps natural that Sagrika would be interested in doing something related to clothes.
“I have been drawn to textiles and apparel since childhood. I grew up in factories and production fields. My textile designer mother encouraged my interest and played a crucial role in leading me towards this industry,” she says.
After graduating from the Fashion Institute of Technology, New York, she started working towards her brand. What motivated her?
“I did not need any motivation because I was actually obsessed with the idea since childhood. But if you ask me my motto, it was to make my customers feel like they are on vacation by just slipping on an Essgee apparel,” she adds.
Launching a brand is one thing, making it a success is quite another. But as the young designer says,
“Fortunately, it has been a great two years for us. Building relationships with customers, understanding their needs, and becoming better has made us all evolve into the larger Essgee family. The fact that almost 50 percent of sales come from our return customers says a lot about our relationship with them. We get most of our customers from Delhi, Mumbai, Jaipur, Bengaluru in India, besides London, Los Angeles and New York internationally.”
It is not just fashion that fuels her aesthetic pursuit. Today, sustainability is a way of doing business rather than just a concept. Sourcing, manufacturing and designing clothes have changed in a way so as to minimise the impact on the environment. Which is why Essgee uses leftover fabric to make accessories, reuses water for washing, saves energy by sun-drying products, and so on. “We use natural fabrics throughout our collections to ensure our carbon footprint isn’t that big. The use of waste fabrics for tassels, embroideries, scarves is a regular practice. We also tend to use a lot of natural materials for our embellishments,” stresses Sagrika.
As for future plans, Sagrika intends to explore jewellery and accessories at some point, and aspires to move from being an e-commerce fashion website to supplying to known multi-designer stores such as Ogaan, Ensemble, Aza and Le Mill, and eventually making the transition into having her own boutique stores across the country and internationally.