Design beyond glamour: Mercedes -Benz Fashion Week Sri Lanka 2025

A global platform redefining what fashion means for a new South Asia where design meets innovation, mobility, sustainability, and culture

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Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Sri Lanka (MBFWSL) returns from 19-23 November 2025, hosted at Cinnamon Life, marking the next chapter of a movement that has reshaped how fashion functions in South Asia.

What began nearly a decade ago as a collaboration between AOD and DIMO, the only Authorised General Distributor for Mercedes-Benz in Sri Lanka, has grown into an ecosystem: one that connects design, education, industry, mobility, culture, and sustainability.

Here, fashion is not treated as surface or spectacle. It operates as system and structure, influencing livelihoods, identity, economic direction, and how a region expresses itself to the world. In this sense, “Design Beyond Glamour” is not a theme, but a shift in how fashion contributes to society.

This year, the platform brings together over 80 emerging Sri Lankan designers and more than 15 designers from India, Bhutan, Bangladesh, and the wider region, reflecting a shared creative language that is proudly South Asian and globally relevant. Instead of presenting heritage as nostalgia, these designers reinterpret craft through innovation, ethics, and future-forward cultural confidence. Following are excerpts from the interview with AOD Founder Linda Speldewinde and DIMO PLC Director Rajeev Pandithage.

What movement does Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Sri Lanka represent today?

Linda: Fashion here is not just expression, it is economic participation, cultural authorship, and confidence. Over nearly twenty years, we've built pathways from education to industry to global visibility. The runway is simply where that story becomes visible. It's a system, not an event.