Louisa Chalatashvili — New East 100

With Tbilisi Mercedes Benz Fashion Week starting in November, it’s time to get ready for underground runway shows and numerous style reports featuring Tbilisi’s boldest designers, stylists and models.

Many of these, including backstage shots and look books, will be shot by Louisa Chalatashvili: whether it’s George Keburia’s alien sunglasses floating on the pink waters of a swimming pool, Tamuna Ingorokva’s beige leather coat matching pale walls and wild sunburnt grass in the sunset, or a tribe of schoolgirl-styled models driving a grand black Soviet ZIL limo through a Georgian highway.

Chalatashvili’s photography is all about treating eclectic and extravagant settings with a warm natural light and celebrating the magic of the analogue pastel colour palette, with a nod to American pop-up.

A perfect collection of dreamy visuals, idealistic interiors and still life shots, Chalatashvili’s photos are also a documentation of the everyday adventures of Georgia’s thriving creatives, Tbilisi’s trendy hotspots and the country’s charming wildernesses.

Her friends — local models, designers and photographers — are filmed exploring abandoned sanatoria, dystopian, concrete-clad neighbourhoods, the art-deco buildings of a former Tbilisi funicular or climbing the cliffy shores of a lake.

Text: Masha Borodacheva
Image: Louisa Chalatashvili