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

AOD Founder Linda Speldewinde

DIMO PLC Director Rajeev Pandithage.

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.www

Q: 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.

Rajeev: At Mercedes-Benz, design has always been the core of identity, not styling, but the engineering of emotion and purpose. When we see fashion in that same frame, it becomes clear why Mercedes-Benz is part of this movement. They share the same principles: precision, responsibility, innovation, and emotion. MBFWSL is where those principles come together in a South Asian context.

Q: Your partnership has lasted almost a decade. What makes it enduring?

Rajeev: We recognised alignment early. Mercedes-Benz has a heritage of championing innovation and design that move the world forward, while AOD nurtures the next generation of Sri Lankan talent to do the same. What began as a collaboration has evolved into a powerful platform that gives designers and young creatives in Sri Lanka the space to showcase, connect, and shape the industry’s future.

Linda: It is a partnership rooted in shared belief: that creativity is not an accessory, it is an economic and cultural force. Together, we’ve helped shape a globally relevant design identity for Sri Lanka and for a region that is beginning to define itself on its own terms.

Q: “Design Beyond Glamour” is the 2025 lens. How does it shape this year’s platform?

Rajeev: For us, it reflects the essence of Mercedes-Benz: intelligent luxury. Beauty that serves meaning. Expression that respects people and planet. Design that is as thoughtful as it is inspiring. That’s what we hope to encourage through this platform, a culture of creating with purpose and bringing to life the true essence of design 

Linda: Our designers today create with accountability, to their communities, to craft systems, to the environment. Their work is emotional and aesthetic, yes, but it also supports livelihoods and futures. That is design beyond glamour.

Q: This year, several shows are being directed in collaboration with designer Amesh Wijesekera. Why is his involvement meaningful?

Linda: Amesh represents proof of what this movement makes possible, Sri Lankan-born, globally recognised, yet rooted here. His work captures the evolution of South Asian fashion: heritage transformed through fearless experimentation. His journey shows what happens when creativity meets ecosystem support, not isolation.

Rajeev: Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Berlin launched his international career. Being able to facilitate that from Sri Lanka makes us proud and we want more designers to have that trajectory and we are happy for him.

Q: How do you see Colombo’s role within this new South Asian creative landscape?

Linda: We are at a moment where South Asia is not borrowing identity, it is defining it. Colombo is increasingly where that identity is articulated and exported.

Rajeev: Colombo is becoming a meeting point, a crossroads where regional talent exchanges ideas, aesthetics, and ambition. That aligns well with Mercedes-Benz’s view of design as a connector of people and futures.

Q: What can audiences expect this year beyond the runway?

Linda: The Mercedes-Benz Future Talks return, a series developed with trend and cultural insight partners that explores how we will live, move, eat, build, and express identity in the next decade. They bring together global designers and cultural voices to examine design as lifestyle, human experience, and future readiness. It reflects Mercedes-Benz as not just an automotive brand, but a design and cultural brand.