India, Sept. 16 -- After 20 years away from the NYFW calendar, Sabyasachi returned with Bengal Byzantine Broadway, a lavish meditation on cultural exchange, Indian craftsmanship, and the complicated business of building a global luxury house.

There is something strange about watching Sabyasachi in New York when you grew up in India. Especially when you've spent the last year learning this city, its fashion ecosystem, its codes, its appetite for the new. Suddenly, at 4 p.m. on a September afternoon, a version of home arrives in the middle of it all, except it isn't quite the India you remember either.

At Spring Studios in Soho, with the September sunlight coming through and the river sitting somewhere beyond the windows, Sabyasachi's ret...