Galib Gassanoff is among this year’s LVMH Prize semi-finalists, and his work arrives with a rare sense of gravitas. Solemn and monumental, it commands attention not only for its striking visual language but for its clear-eyed mission to celebrate and safeguard the fading craft traditions of his homeland.
Founded in 2024, Institution positions itself less as a fashion label than as a cultural mechanism, and the thesis holds firm. Gassanoff’s cross-cultural biography—Azerbaijani roots, a Tbilisi upbringing, and a final polish in Milan—reads fluently in the collectsion’s hybrid vocabulary.
His sophomore collectsion paid homage to Borchaly, the Caucasian region of his youth, drawing intellectual charge from 1918, when democratic reforms in the region ushered in women’s political participation and suffrage. The presence of Peri-Khan Sofieva, the first Muslim woman elected to a self-governing body and a fellow native of Karajalar, lingered in the background as an inspiring figure.
Rather than resorting to literal storytelling, Gassanoff works through suggestion. Traditional women’s headpieces dissolved, morphed, and resurfaced throughout the collectsion in shifting forms, charting the passage from social obligation to self-definition. Craft arrived with full conviction. The collectsion’s conceptual backbone is matched by formidable handwork: Borchaly weavers in Kvemo Kartli produced intricate rugs requiring up to 85,000 knots, while bouclé and felted double-faced wool were coaxed into sculptural, imposing forms. Spread-cut capes delivered drama, veering at once toward the liturgical and the lyrical. Particularly clever was Gassanoff’s transformation of humble cotton shoelaces into structural elements, an act of ingenuity that rewards a closer look.
Plush skins and richly handled yarns—wool, cashmere, yak—added tactile depth. Even when silhouettes tipped into excess, a current of melancholy and longing ran through the work, making it evocative and moving. These are pieces that privilege performance over pragmatism, they carry memory, and are visually magnetic. And it didn’t hurt the collectsion’s intellectual bite that Gassanoff’s walking monuments circled the round runway perched on sexy Manolos.
