This Is the Place to Be”: Global Fashion Meets in Moscow

When Nichole M. Bess founded Noir Fashion Week in New York, she described her initiative with a simple phrase–a luxury cultural platform redefining the geography of fashion. She continues to bring that vision to life by championing talented designers. The geography of Nichole’s projects now spans an expanding list of cities, including Nairobi, and wherever she goes, she brings distinctive local brands into the fold. “The future of global fashion can be built from many centers,” she says.

In recent years, Moscow has emerged as an influential new center of global fashion–a city that has brought together fashion industry leaders from every continent, particularly from fast-growing economies. Every fall, the BRICS+ Fashion Summit–one of the industry’s most significant business events–brings together the heads of industry associations from dozens of countries, manufacturers, investors, designers, distributors, and other experts to make strategic decisions about the industry’s development. Nichole M. Bess is a regular speaker at the forum, which will take place this year from September 28 to 30.

For many participants, the BRICS+ Fashion Summit makes it significantly easier to gain direct access to professional communities across Asia, Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East. These markets are where new brands are emerging, manufacturing is expanding, and demand for fashion products is growing. The opportunity to hold dozens of meetings with representatives from these regions in one place over just a few days makes the Moscow forum a unique platform for finding new partners and developing international business.

Nichole also emphasizes the need for such a platform: “Large-scale forums such as the BRICS+ Fashion Summit act as high-impact exchange hubs where fashion ecosystems intersect. By combining cultural storytelling with deal-making infrastructure, events like BRICS+ transform one-off meetings into sustained networks that expand market access, diversify creative perspectives, and drive inclusive growth across borders.” The connections she herself made in Moscow later led to collaborations around the world: a producer from South Sudan Fashion Week became her partner at Noir Fashion Week Kenya, colleagues from Nairobi Fashion Week helped her better understand the local market, and African designers went on to take part in her shows in New York. “We meet in Moscow, but the relationships travel the world,” Bess sums up.

Nichole M. Bess discovered Russian fashion, which has been on the rise in recent years, at Moscow Fashion Week. “Bold, because Russian designers have a fearless way of mixing silhouettes, textiles, and storytelling. Historic, because the country’s cultural and artistic legacies are embedded in the details,” she says. Season after season, Moscow’s runways give emerging designers access to a new fashion ecosystem and an audience that might otherwise never have noticed them–a goal that also resonates with Nichole, who is dedicated to promoting independent fashion. An American brand is also expected to take part in the new season of Moscow Fashion Week, which will run from September 26 to October 1. We’ll be following the forum and the runway shows in the Russian capital. Bess sums up what makes these events stand out: “It shows from the organization, to the hospitality, to its ability to listen to each region on its needs. This is the place to be.”