Georgian Azerbaijani designer Galib Gassanoff is gearing up to show his Fall/Winter 2026 collection in Milan on Friday night. But it’s not the only thing on his mind. Two weeks ago, his brand, Institution by Galib Gassanoff, was announced as a semi-finalist for the 2026 LVMH Prize, with the next round taking place during Paris Fashion Week on March 5.
The competition environment is nothing new for Gassanoff. He won the Zalando Visionary Award in Copenhagen in January, securing €50,000 and a fully funded, on-schedule show in the Danish capital for SS27. While industry prizes are known for offering emerging labels a path to scale, Gassanoff’s mission is not to grow the next major luxury house, with hundreds of stores. Instead, he hopes to build a small, considered business that supports the artisans and communities he grew up around.
Ahead of this season’s Milan show, I meet Gassanoff in his temporary studio space, which he’s rented to host castings and appointments, in place of his two-room apartment that doubles as the brand’s HQ. Upon entering, I spot voluminous shearlings, yak wool, feather-light leather and beautifully woven carpet among the FW26 collection; as the designer pulls pieces, they are so large that they sometimes require a second pair of hands to show the cut. The intricate garments are produced by rural Georgian and Azerbaijani artisans, and for every look, he tells me the village or the region it was made in as well as the history of the artisans who made it. “Every collection has a story and a history, and that’s important,” Gassanoff says. “And I like to keep hand-sewn elements in all the collections, which isn’t great for margins.”
But he isn’t too concerned about the numbers for now. Institution by Galib Gassanoff is currently “more of a project” than a business, the designer concedes. Ahead of each collection, Gassanoff partners with institutions like Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Culture, or Capital Culture House in Rome, to secure funds in order to spotlight and financially support the artisan communities that produce his pieces, hence the brand name. In addition to this funding, the label has a handful of small stockists: concept stores Antonia (Milan), Escapist (Tbilisi, Georgia) and Rebelle (Osaka, Tokyo), which came on board last year. The Zalando prize money helped Gassanoff pay his rent, keep his one employee and two interns, produce the next collection, and compensate the artisans who made it.