Moscow Fashion Week: From New Delhi to Istanbul

In Moscow, the seventh season of Moscow Fashion Week has come to an end. From September 26 to October 1, it brought together more than 350 designers from 24 regions of Russia and 12 foreign countries; nearly 100 shows were held over six days, and more than 90 brands were presented at the market and showroom. At the same time, Moscow hosted the BRICS+ Fashion Summit, which was attended by industry representatives from more than 60 countries.

Moscow Fashion Week is not just about runway shows; it has already developed a clearly defined business impact. Following the previous season, participants signed more than 70 partnership agreements, and the total value of the deals discussed exceeded 400 million rubles. Moscow Fashion Week is increasingly functioning not only as a catwalk but also as a platform for designers to enter new markets.

BRICS Business Magazine has selected several international participants who particularly vividly demonstrate what the fashion of fast-growing economies is becoming. We begin with Kanika Goyal / KGL from India and Gökhan Yavaş and Murat Aytılım from Turkey.

KGL (India)

Kanika Goyal is one of the most recognizable names in Indian fashion worldwide. A graduate of NIFT in New Delhi and Parsons in New York, she worked with Marchesa, Prada, and designer Bibhu Mohapatra before launching her own brand KGL. Today, the label builds its language on intricate tailoring, architectural shapes, rich color, and a deliberate departure from traditional notions of Indian fashion.

In Moscow, KGL, presented by the Fashion Design Council of India, showcased the Arc Echo collection: woven denim, hybrid jackets, mosaic knitwear, and bold color combinations. India is recognizable here primarily through the approach to color, but with almost no literal ethnic references. This is exactly what makes KGL interesting: the brand demonstrates that a contemporary designer from India no longer needs to sell «Indianness» to the world in order to remain part of the national fashion scene. Among KGL’s famous fans, Moscow Fashion Week names Priyanka Chopra and M.I.A.

Gokhanyavas | Murat Aytulum (Turkey)

Turkey demonstrated a different model of international promotion. On September 28, as part of the collaboration between Antalya Fashion Week and Moscow Fashion Week, Gökhan Yavaş and Murat Aytılım presented their collections.

Gökhan Yavaş is a graduate of the Faculty of Textile and Fashion Design at Dokuz Eylül University and the Istanbul Fashion Academy. In 2016, he took second place at Koza, one of Turkey’s leading young designer competitions; a year later, he founded his own label, and in 2018 he held his first show at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Istanbul. In his collections, Yavaş combines streetwear, intricate tailoring, and elements of sustainable design; among his experiments are working with fabric remnants and zero-waste production.

The Armored Silence collection was presented in Moscow. Its starting point was the Naejangsan mountains of Korea, but within the collection, the Korean landscape merges with Turkish materials and artisanal traditions. Black and graphite gradually transition into an almost pure white, while gold and rhinestones contrast with textured sheepskin. The result is a rare example of Global South fashion built not on a dialogue with Paris or Milan, but on direct cultural exchange between Asia and Turkey.

The second designer from Turkey – Murat Aytulum – founded his own brand in 2010, and since the middle of the following decade has regularly participated in Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Istanbul. Leather remains one of the central materials in his work – a result of the designer’s many years of experience in the leather and fashion industries.

For Turkish designers, the Moscow show was not merely an exchange of collections. Aitylym himself described participation in Moscow Fashion Week as the brands’ largest project of the year. The Turkish press, in turn, viewed the collaboration between Antalya Fashion Week and the Moscow venue as a channel for interaction between the two creative industries.