Mercedez Benz Fashion Week Tbilisi goes digital

Georgia’s biggest fashion event has moved online for 2020, celebrating the country’s top designers with a sleek new web platform.

Held annually since 2015, Mercedez Benz Fashion Week Tbilisi was forced to cancel their live event planned for May.

The website features 21 Georgian designers alongside their collections, with videos and links to their online shops. Spring/summer 2021 highlights include the deconstructed silk dresses of Lako Bukia, brightly-coloured genderfluid suits and frocks from Situationist, and the Run Away collection by Reckless, featuring young rebels in minimalist, unisex two-piece outfits.

“During the past years, the Georgian fashion industry has been an economic success story,” the creative director of the Mercedez Benz Fashion Week Tbilisi, Sofia Tchkonia, told The Calvert Journal. “However, the Covid-19 crisis has dramatically affected the fashion industry worldwide and consequently Georgian Fashion and the art industries. This new digital experience will work as a global meet-up point, offering interviews, designer diaries, providing the opportunity for designers to tell their stories.”

Many of the videos on the website were shot in the former Coca-Cola factory in the centre of Tbilisi, which is being transformed into a cultural centre, as well as the country’s first fashion school.