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Zhalt Zhult brings an emotional four-stage journey of exile, mourning, rebirth, and return that seeks healing and support through clothing. Discover how the collection reclaims femininity as power by translating ancient Kazakh traditions.
Updated 12:51 am EDT, October 14, 2025
Published 12:51 am EDT, October 14, 2025
Photo Courtesy: Visa Fashion Week Almaty
Photographer: Epov Timur
Zhalt Zhult brings an emotional four-stage journey of exile, mourning, rebirth, and return that seeks healing and support through clothing. Discover how the collection reclaims femininity as power by translating ancient Kazakh traditions.
Updated 12:51 am EDT, October 14, 2025
Published 12:51 am EDT, October 14, 2025
Photo Courtesy: Visa Fashion Week Almaty
Photographer: Epov Timur
Originally from Kazakhstan and with a project that distinctly stood out at Visa Fashion Week Almaty, Tomiris Kupzhassarova, the designer behind Zhalt Zhult has been named the winner of the Next Designer Award, powered by Visa, a recognition that not only celebrates her vision and career, but also serves as a showcase, even an embrace toward success; a way of showing the artist how capable she is of captivating through her designs and how truly valuable her creative vision is.
Tomiris’ proposal has been an ode to femininity and to the liberation of female expression, conveyed through both the ancestral paths, rituals, and traditions of her culture, and new reinterpretations of the spiritual.
The journey projected through her garments depicts a process of internal decolonization and establishes a system designed to find support, wholeness, and healing through clothing. This is her debut collection, titled “Bailiau: A New Kazakh Rite of Female Initiation,” which presents a four-stage ritual, exile, mourning, rebirth, and return.
In modern society, the feminine often provokes rejection, because we are taught to value strength over sensitivity, qualities that, unfortunately, are still labeled as “masculine” and “feminine.” We grow up believing that delicacy means weakness, when in truth, femininity has always been another form of power, perhaps the greatest of all. The fact is that, for better or worse, it falls upon us women to fight (also) against this belief. And in recent years, we’ve seen that fashion offers a plausible path for that fight, one that often appears silent, yet in my opinion, is one of the most powerful and effective of all.
Tomiris Kupzhassarova has created a concept to materialize through clothing a heroine who finds her inner grounding and reconnects with the strength of her female lineage, erased from the shezhire (genealogical chronicles).
Zhalt Zhult Bailiau collection explores tying and binding as an ancient female bodily ritual carrying generational wisdom. Her work conveys the power in a mother’s gesture of braiding her daughters’ hair, in the way women craft amulets and embroidery to protect their loved ones from the outside world, and how ribbons in this equation act as vessels for wishes.
Her garments balance innocence and danger. The silhouettes evoke baby blankets, toys, and crib mobiles, while also referencing protective charms crafted from claws, fangs, and symbolic patterns. “Bailiau” is a search for inner harmony between the vulnerable inner daughter and her future strength: the readiness to assert herself and set boundaries.
“For me, this collection is like a lullaby. It speaks of infinite love for our inner child, of the attempt to nurture her again, with gentleness, with care, but also with protection. It is, at the same time, a ritual of care and an armor for the battle for oneself.”
Lucía holds a master’s degree in communication management, specializing in fashion and luxury marketing. With a profound appreciation for art, fashion, and history, she has discovered her vocation in fashion journalism. Currently, she dedicates her efforts to this field in her early twenties, residing in the dynamic city of Madrid.
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