Founded by Galib Gassanoff, the fashion and socio-artistic project works with artisans across the Caucasus to preserve endangered craft traditions through clothing and cultural exchange
- Who is it? Institution is a Milan-based project founded by Galib Gassanoff that uses fashion and craft to preserve the heritage of the Caucasus – Georgia and Azerbaijan, particularly.
- Why do I want it? Hand-crafted garments carry centuries-old traditions into the present.
- Where can I find it? At Dover Street Market Paris, New York and Los Angeles, Printemps Paris and selected retailers worldwide.
Who is it? Long before becoming a designer, Galib Gassanoff was fascinated by the cultures, languages and traditions that shaped the world around him. Born in Georgia and raised in an Azerbaijani community, Gassanoff grew up in a place where customs, preserved for centuries, shaped his daily life. This early curiosity underpins Institution, the project he founded in 2024. “I was always interested in ethnography and cultural research,” he recalls. Those early experiences, he says, informed the way he sees culture, as something shaped through exchange and movement, but also preservation.
As a teenager, Gassanoff travelled frequently to Tbilisi, moving between the traditions of his hometown and the cosmopolitan energy of the capital. “It felt like travelling from one country to another,” he says. “The Caucasus is a multi-ethnic geographic area, where you are in touch with lots of different ethnic groups and their practices, crafts and languages. And when you learn a language, you instantly understand the way another ethnic group thinks.” The instinct to observe, research and understand before creating has remained central to his practice.
After moving to Milan at 18 to study fashion at Haute Future Fashion Academy, Gassanoff spent a decade working in the industry. During this time, he co-founded Italian fashion label (and this year’s LVMH Prize semi-finalist) Act No1, together with Chinese-Italian designer, Luca Lin. Through traditional motifs and theatrical opera masks to sheer tulle bomber jackets and corseted denim, the label drew on the founders’ backgrounds, translating cultural references into contemporary pieces. Gassanoff left Act No1 in February 2023, frustrated by the structures of the industry. In the conventional sense, “Institution is not a brand,” he explains. “I wanted to create a project,” to build something that brings together clothing, textile research, contemporary art and cultural preservation, to resist the fast-moving cycles of the industry. It was these defining ideas that formed the foundation of Institution. He describes it as a “socio-artistic project” where different disciplines and communities can exist together through garments: artisans, artists, photographers, filmmakers and designers.
Why do I want it? Rather than beginning with trends or seasonal references, Gassanoff’s collections start in the villages of Georgia and Azerbaijan, where declining craft techniques become the foundation for contemporary clothing. Much of Gassanoff’s research takes him back to the Caucasus, where he works with artisans preserving techniques passed down through generations. Women who weave carpets, dye wool by hand and create textiles entirely from scratch hold knowledge that is disappearing. “There are only five or six women who are still weaving carpets,” he says. “Who will teach the younger generation in a few years’ time?”
Full skirts made of bulrush are woven like baskets, hand-stitched shoelaces mimic chunky knits and double-faced wool is sculpted into architectural outerwear. Rug-like woven panels jut away from the body like fragments of tapestry, creating silhouettes that feel monumental yet fluid. Gassanoff often exaggerates the shoulders and hips, drawing on Soviet-era sculptures that surrounded his childhood, where structured figures cast in metal and concrete continue to inform his approach to proportion. Like the craft traditions they preserve, Institution’s collections resist the seasonal cycle. Rather than existing as isolated collections, pieces are intended to build upon one another, layered together or worn individually as statement garments. The result is a wardrobe that accumulates over time.
Yet Gassanoff quickly realised that fashion itself could become one of his most powerful tools, a means of ensuring a future for these centuries-old traditions. Galleries invite contemplation, while runways generate attention, and by presenting collections during fashion week, from Copenhagen to Milan, he attempts to bring endangered crafts into an international conversation. The appeal, and impact, is already tangible. After showcasing woven pieces created by a collective of women artisans from the Caucasus on the runway, the attention generated enough funding to help them open a weaving studio in their village. “My idea,” he says, “is to widen the collaborative branch,” to make traditional handcraft desirable.
Where can I find it? Institution is available through a selected network of retailers, including Dover Street Market Paris, New York and Los Angeles, Printemps Paris, and other international stockists.
