While Tbilisi has been getting more attention this past year as an emerging fashion capital bridging East and West, this was their first season to have three menswear designers and of the forty-two showing. Sports, gender, skateboard culture, pride, and nationalism ran as undercurrents. Tbilisi is maximal and minimal at the same time. The menswear collections stood out as they weren’t afraid to stray from the traditional runway.

During the week, we got to meet many of the innovative young designers making up the scene. Here are some of our highlights.

 

Tamra

Tamuna Karumidze is a multi-media artist born and based in Tbilisi who has dipped into the world of fashion designer under the label Tamra. Her work focuses on exploring marginalized urban tribes with one of a kind garments that she can feature in her video works that have been screened at various International Film Festivals, Art Forums and Exhibitions, several in collaboration with Vogue. For Fall/Winter 2017, she presented her pieces on local skateboarders and friends who ollied and flipped down the parking in lieu of the runway.

 

 

Gola Damian

Gola Damian is one of the well-known designers on the Georgian fashion scene and is already stocked abroad. He mixes commercially ready pieces like emblazed hats and tee-shirts with catch lines like “gypsy chic” and “virgin prostitute” along with classical pieces breaking the boundaries of ordinary looks reimagined through a set kitsch eyes. Many of the guys were streetcasted and gave us a taste of the cool kids of Tbilisi, many who congregate at the bars and clubs making the city a travel destination alternative to Berlin.

 

Aznauri

Founded in Tbilisi Georgia in 2016, AZNAURI is a menswear brand, designed by Irakli Rusadze (the brainchild behind Bella Hadid’s favourite Georgian brand Situationist), making their fashion week debut. With a miniature football pitch set in the courtyard of the Marriot Hotel, at first looks like a film cut of the Matrix playing football in suits and black trenches. Forty-five minutes in, and models all sweating, you realise how strong the quality of the collection is as there are no signs of wear and tear. While the collection is part of the recent wave of “new minimalism” in Georgia, the designer took inspiration from some of the darker times in Georgian history, the early 90s and presented it in reference to one of the happiest times in modern Georgian History, when the won the 1981 Euro Cup. During the fashion match, actual audio from the 1981 winning game played and the presentation ended with the models lined up and placing their hand over their heart as the national anthem played. Moving debut!

 

 

Chaos Concept

Next to the uber-trendy design hotel The Rooms, sits the multi-label new store Chaos Concept (Chovelidze street,Tbilisi, Georgia 0108). Several of the designers that showed during Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Tbilisi are stocked there alongside foreign brands like JW Anderson, Shrimps, WoodWood and Masha Ma. The shop also works as a gallery space and includes an inside skate ramp. A must shopping destination when visiting the city.

 

 

LTFR

Let the Funk Right (Vashlovani street N1, Tbilisi, Georgia), is a small hole in the wall find from one of the Tbilisi’s up coming rappers who launched his own menswear streetwear line. Tee-shirts, jumpsuits, original baseball caps, jewellery and vintage 80s and 90s bits and bobs fill the one room shop that oozes the city’s cool. If anything, the space brings concept into a new chapter, working as an “observatorium” that invites you to come and see.