Can clothing carry anthropological meaning? A few designers have been thinking about it this Milan season, suggesting that peeling off strata and layers can provide both historic and emotional cues about one’s past.
Galib Gassanoff, a talent worth following — and not just because he’s among the semifinalists for the 2026 LVMH Prize for Young Designers — has made his native Azerbaijan’s textile craft legacy a metaphor for excavating the cultural layers that inform his roots, upbringing and design ethos. Ultimately, his identity.
Under the vast rotunda of the show space, about one third of the 30 or so models strutted down the catwalk in sculptural concoctions with pannier hips, rounded stand-up shoulders and integrated veils in thick, black felted wool. More iterations followed – with a cocoon-like cape and a three-piece, floor-sweeping-skirt suit in which the blazer doubled up as a cloak.
That was until Gassanoff’s time capsule journey took off.
The architectural purity and meaty fabrics frayed into bulbous fringed capes; were hand-woven into blanket-like overcoats that protruded dangling strips of fabric; softened into fuzzy shearling coats, or morphed entirely into fluid chiffon frocks, crinkled and billowing, draped on the body into amorphous silhouettes – the veils dropped or reduced to barely-there head wraps as lightweight as puffs of air.
In the transition laid the designer’s lyrical history lesson. In 1918, after democracy was established in the Borchaly region of the Caucaus, where Gassanoff was born and raised, the first woman – one of Muslim faith – was elected to office and the religious mandate on women to wear veils was lifted. Peri-Khan Sofieva became the embodiment of female liberation.
Three unique pieces (two skirts and a men’s top) incorporated the traditional Karachop, Fachralo, and Bordjalou rugs, hand-knotted on vertical looms by Azerbaijani weavers of the Borchaly community in Kvemo Kartli, Georgia. They qualified as one-of-a-kind collectibles.
“This art is disapperaring, there are very few women still handweaving. The collaboration intends to shed light on the craft, draw young people to it and urge the government to support it,” Gassanoff said backstage.
How honest and real, a sharp contrast to the industry’s profit-chasing approach.
