Amid the pantomime of street style at Copenhagen Fashion Week’s S/S 2027 edition, Galib Gassanoff’s show provided a welcome jolt of poetry. Inside the Statens Museum for Kunst, the runway was lined with tightly patterned carpets from the Caucasus mountain region between the Black and Caspian Seas. These antique pieces became a platform for sculptured silk coats, finely knit shawl cardigans and spare black trousers, while evoking the tangled history of Central Asia, Northern Iran, Anatolia and Eastern Europe.
‘These carpets have specific knots which all of these cultures have shared in their making. They unified everyone as they each added their own ornaments, colours and gestures. The carpets represent this kind of sharing,’ Gassanoff tells Wallpaper*.
‘My idea is not about fashion. It is more about culture, ethnography, craftsmanship – that is what interests me the most. I’m a little far from the glam of fashion,’ the Zalando Visionary Award 2026 winner and semi-finalist for the 2026 LVMH Prize says. Gassanoff presents under the name Institution. ‘It’s not a fashion brand, it’s a roof. It’s not only me, but also the team and communities I’m finding in my region; I want to amplify that to cover more regions, more stories and more places – that is my priority overall.’
Aesthetically and geographically, the city of Copenhagen is a fair distance away from Gassanoff’s roots. He grew up in a village of just 4,000 people on the outskirts of Tbilisi in Georgia where everyone spoke the same dialect and everyone, he remembers, looked alike. As a child, he was interested in folklore and clothing, the tradition of head scarves and so on, but he didn’t know what fashion design was. At 13, surfing the World Wide Web for the first time, he discovered John Galliano’s eccentric work for Dior.
The process behind the collection’s ‘coin’ dresses
‘That impacted me a lot. I saw lots of ethnographic elements showcased on a scene in a theatrical way, with the music and the characters. It resonated with me. I realised that maybe I could unify all my passions: music, visual art, clothing, culture, and message, all of it, through fashion.’
At 18, Gassanoff moved to Milan to study at Haute Future Fashion Academy after receiving a scholarship. ‘I have been a guest there, just like I am here in Copenhagen. I’m Azerbaijani of Georgia, so I’m an ethnic minority there too,’ he says. Italy has introduced Gassanoff to ways of making from the 1950s that are somewhat endangered today. Not many tailors are making in the same way, using horsehair and canvases or handstitched hemlines because it takes so much longer. ‘Everyone is rushing to industrialise everything but I wanted to keep all of that skill. Yes, you can do a lot with the machine, but I prefer that there is a human touch.’
Gassanoff’s show encapsulated that commitment to the artisanal: his models wore Azerbaijani ‘jorab’ socks and sculptural cotton cord tabards hand-knitted by women he’d met in his native region. White silk chiffon robes were covered in ‘Tetri’ coins, the fractional currency introduced after Georgia’s independence from the Soviet Union in 1995. They are a symbol of freedom, democracy and national rebirth. The pieces open to become totally flat, offering a new form as a wall piece or tapestry. ‘It’s not something to be sold, it’s something to be collected,’ he says. ‘It’s a one-of-a-kind piece. I’m trying to encourage a dialogue between what is art, what is textile, what is collectable, what is clothing.’
Gassanoff’s work is layered in the residue of the different places he represents and yet has stepped away from. It evokes the distance between Azerbaijan and Georgia; the move from village to city; fashion as a mode of art. Gassanoff’s guest spot on the week’s show schedule forged yet another context. A blank page. ‘Scandinavia couldn’t be an inspiration for me because I don’t live here. I worked a lot with volumes, but I wanted all the attention to be on the carpets, which are very rich. I am myself a guest here, and when I go back, it will remain a memory. A dream. Just like I went to sleep, and then woke up.’
