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Moscow has a way of surprising you. Beyond the fashion shows, designer collections and stylish crowds, there is a city filled with breathtaking architecture, fascinating history, excellent food and shopping experiences worth making time for.

I was in Moscow recently for Fashion Week and The BRICS+ Fashion Summit, and while the runway was the main reason for my visit, it was the daily strolls from our hotel to the show venues that gave me a closer look at the city. Sometimes, the best way to discover a destination is to simply step outside and let the streets lead you somewhere interesting.

I have always maintained that Moscow is underrated. It may not be the first destination that comes to mind when people talk about beautiful cities to visit. Still, there is something about its grand buildings, expansive public spaces and mix of old-world charm and modern living that makes it unforgettable.

Start with Red Square

If there is one place you must see when visiting Moscow, it is Red Square. The historic square sits at the heart of the city and brings together some of its most recognisable landmarks, including the colourful domes of St Basil’s Cathedral, the Kremlin walls and the State Historical Museum.

Walking through the square feels like stepping into a postcard. The architecture is impressive, and there is plenty to take in, whether you are interested in history, architecture or simply finding a beautiful spot for your Instagram content.

Right beside the square is GUM, the historic luxury department store whose elegant shopping arcades are an attraction in their own right. Even if luxury shopping is not on your itinerary, the building is worth exploring for its architecture, impressive interiors and the range of stores inside.

One of my favourite experiences, however, was catching the sunrise with friends at the Zaryadye floating bridge. The bridge extends out over the Moskva River, offering sweeping views of the city and its landmarks. Watching the city slowly come to life in the early morning was a lovely reminder that some travel experiences are best enjoyed before the crowds arrive.

It was one of those simple moments that stay with you long after a trip ends.

Explore the Kremlin and the surrounding sights.

You cannot visit Moscow without appreciating the Kremlin, the historic fortified complex that remains one of Russia’s most important landmarks. Its towers, walls, cathedrals and palaces tell stories of the country’s political and cultural history.

The surrounding area is equally rewarding to explore on foot. St Basil’s Cathedral is a must-see, while the nearby Alexander Garden offers a quieter place to stroll and admire the surroundings.

Depending on how much time you have, consider visiting the Bolshoi Theatre, one of Moscow’s most celebrated cultural institutions. Even from the outside, its grand façade makes an impression.

My advice is to allow yourself time to walk between these sights rather than rushing from one attraction to another. Moscow is a city that rewards curiosity, and some of its loveliest details reveal themselves when you are not in a hurry.

A little shopping along the way

Fashion Week naturally comes with an appreciation for style, so shopping was always going to be part of my Moscow experience.

Our daily walks also took us to the underground Okhotny Ryad shopping centre, near Manezhnaya Square and opposite the Four Seasons Hotel Moscow. It offered a convenient opportunity to browse shops between the fashion shows, including stores featuring Russian brands.

It was an easy way to squeeze in some retail therapy without dedicating an entire day to shopping. For anyone interested in discovering local labels, it is worth adding to the itinerary.

And if you enjoy fashion, GUM deserves a little extra time. Beyond the shopping, its historic architecture and beautifully designed interiors make it one of those places where the experience is as much about looking around as it is about buying anything.

Moscow is quietly winning me over with its food.

I will admit something: food has not always been the highlight of my travel experiences. I have visited destinations where the sightseeing was wonderful, but the meals did not quite live up to expectations.

Moscow, however, is slowly making its way onto my list of cities with some of the best food I have ever tried.

During our visit, the Fashion Fund team organized different dining experiences at restaurants across the city, allowing us to explore Moscow beyond its traditional tourist attractions. Two places stood out for me: Rubel and BURO. TSUM.

Located on the ground floor of GUM, Rubel is particularly special because of its setting. One side of the restaurant looks into GUM’s elegant shopping arcades, while the other offers views towards the Kremlin.

The restaurant brings together traditional Russian cuisine, family recipes and contemporary dining. Its name comes from a traditional wooden tool once used to press and smooth linen, reflecting the restaurant’s interest in preserving elements of Russian heritage in a fresh, modern way.

The interiors draw inspiration from Moscow’s architectural history, with striking chandeliers and carefully selected historical details. There is a sense of occasion without the space feeling like a museum.

The menu takes diners on a journey through Russia’s diverse culinary traditions, with dishes inspired by different regions and generations of family cooking. Seafood features prominently, alongside familiar Russian favorites such as borscht, pelmeni, vareniki and traditional appetizers.

There are also more inventive creations, including a Russian-inspired barley dish with prawns and imaginative desserts that reinterpret familiar ingredients.

What makes Rubel particularly worth visiting is the combination of food, atmosphere and location. After exploring Red Square and GUM, settling in for a meal overlooking one of Moscow’s most historic settings feels like a natural extension of the experience.

BURO. TSUM: Where fashion meets food

If Rubel offers a taste of Russian heritage, BURO. TSUM brings a distinctly fashionable energy to the dining experience.

Located on the fifth floor of TSUM, Moscow’s iconic luxury department store, the restaurant sits at the intersection of fashion, shopping and contemporary dining. Its location makes it a natural stop for anyone exploring the city’s style scene.

The interiors take inspiration from classic French brasseries, interpreted through a contemporary design aesthetic. The result is an elegant space that feels right at home in one of Moscow’s most recognizable fashion destinations.

The menu combines European classics with modern culinary ideas and seasonal ingredients. Dishes include crab ravioli with shrimp, veal-stuffed cabbage rolls with morel sauce and creative interpretations of familiar favorites. The breakfast menu also offers interesting options, including blini, vareniki and zucchini pancakes.

One of the restaurant’s attractions is its setting. Depending on where you sit, you can enjoy views of the surrounding city, including the area around the Bolshoi Theatre.

For fashion lovers, BURO. TSUM is an especially appealing stop. You can spend the afternoon browsing designer stores at TSUM before settling in for a meal, making it easy to combine two of Moscow’s greatest pleasures: fashion and food.

Moscow deserves more attention.

What I took away from my time in Moscow was an appreciation for a city that offers so much more than its international reputation might suggest.

There is history in its grand squares, beauty in its architecture, character in its shopping streets and a culinary scene that deserves to be explored. Even the ordinary moments, walking between fashion venues with my delegate manager, Brovkina Ekaterina, and new friends I made along this trip, stopping to admire a building or discovering a restaurant along the way, became part of the experience.

I still maintain that Moscow is seriously underrated. People do not talk enough about how breathtaking the city is, and I would encourage anyone considering a visit to look beyond the obvious itinerary.

Make time for Red Square, explore the Kremlin area, catch a sunrise from the floating bridge, browse the shops and sit down for a proper meal at Rubel or BURO. TSUM.

And most importantly, leave room for a little wandering. Sometimes, the best discoveries happen between the places you originally planned to visit.

There is always a certain delight in being back in Moscow. Between the fashion, the food and the unmistakable flair of the city, there is never a shortage of things to enjoy. But beyond the beautiful sights and stylish crowds, my return to the Russian capital for the 2026 BRICS+ Fashion Summit and Moscow Fashion Week offered something more to think about: the future of fashion in a world increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence, even for African creatives.

Held from September 28 to 30, the BRICS+ Fashion Summit brought together industry experts, designers, business leaders and fashion professionals from more than 60 countries to discuss the forces shaping the industry. Alongside it, Moscow Fashion Week, which ran from September 26 to October 1, provided a closer look at the creativity, craftsmanship and cultural influences finding their way onto the runway.

And if there was one conversation that stayed with me, it was about artificial intelligence and what its growing influence means for human creativity.

There is no denying that AI is making its way into almost every corner of the fashion industry. From predicting consumer behavior and generating design concepts to creating digital visuals and improving production processes, the technology is changing how brands work.

At the Summit’s session, Artificial Intelligence in the Creative Process: Tool, or Co-Author?, industry professionals explored a question that is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore: when technology can create designs in seconds, what happens to the human creativity that has always made fashion exciting?

Kanika Goyal, founder and creative director of Indian brand KGL, offered a useful perspective, arguing that while AI can assist with design, it cannot understand how a model feels or whether a particular piece of embroidery belongs in a specific place. Those decisions still require human judgement.

Sergio Puig, director of Mediterranean Fashion Week Valencia, also cautioned against the possibility of brands losing their individuality if everyone relies on the same technological tools.

It is a fair concern. Fashion is more than putting together colours, fabrics and silhouettes that look good on a screen. It is about emotion, identity, culture and the occasional creative decision that makes you wonder how someone even thought of it.

AI can generate ideas, analyze trends and make the design process faster, but can it replicate the experience of a designer drawing inspiration from childhood memories, traditional craftsmanship or a culture they have spent years understanding?

Perhaps the bigger question is not whether AI will replace designers, but whether designers will allow it to dictate their creativity.

For emerging brands, particularly those working with limited resources, AI presents opportunities to compete in a market that might otherwise be out of reach. However, the challenge will be using these tools without producing collections that all look and feel the same.

Technology may be changing the fashion business, but originality remains its greatest currency.

Kiko Romeo Brings Kenyan Rhythm to Moscow

Away from the conference rooms, Moscow Fashion Week offered its own compelling argument for why human creativity still matters. I also had the chance to experience some incredible runway showcases, thanks to our fashion facilitators, Ksusah Shalygina and Angelika Sarkisyan, who ensured we had front-row seats to take in the best of the fashion week.

One of the highlights for me was the showcase by Kenyan fashion brand Kiko Romeo. There was something particularly exciting about watching an African brand bring its designs to an international runway, accompanied by the sounds of Muthoni Drummer Queen and Blinky Bill’s Sina Makosa.

The music gave the presentation an unmistakable East African flavour, adding rhythm and personality to the models’ strides. It was a reminder that fashion does not exist in isolation. The brand unveiled its printed collection consisting of cotton easy styling pieces that brought that African flair to the runway.

For African designers, platforms such as Moscow Fashion Week offer an opportunity to introduce their work to audiences beyond the continent, while showing that African fashion is not a single aesthetic or story. It is a collection of influences, ideas and creative expressions that deserve space in the global conversation.

The BRICS+ Fashion Summit reinforced this point through discussions about cultural identity, international cooperation and the importance of helping local brands access new markets.

For African fashion to grow internationally, visibility is important, but so are the business relationships, production capacity and infrastructure that allow designers to turn attention into sustainable opportunities.

Another memorable presentation took place at the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, where Moscow-based Viva Vox staged its showcase.

The setting alone made the experience special. The museum’s red walls, sculptures and striking architecture became part of the visual story, offering a refreshing departure from the conventional runway.

Viva Vox presented a black themed collection, with elongated silhouettes, leather pieces, bodysuits, loose coats and trench coats featuring stand collars. Dark sunglasses added a sharp finishing touch, while sandy brown and beige tones softened the collection.

The interplay between eveningwear and street-style details was particularly interesting. Against the museum’s grand backdrop, the clothes seemed to occupy a space between fashion, art and everyday life.

It was also a fitting reminder of a recurring theme at the Summit: fashion and cultural institutions have much to offer each other. Museums preserve history, while designers reinterpret it, giving familiar ideas new meaning for contemporary audiences.

Moscow-based Solangel is one of the labels I always look forward to seeing at Moscow Fashion Week, and this season was no exception. The Designer, Irena Soprano dedicated the collection to Russian ballet, sending voluminous dresses, sculptural corsets, long gloves, pearls and crystals down the runway. Real ballerinas in classic tutus joined the models, adding a theatrical touch to the showcase. There was an exciting Hollywood connection, too with this showcase. One of Solangel’s creations that featured in this showcase recently appeared in The Devil Wears Prada 2, worn by Meryl Streep as Miranda Priestly.

Beyond these highlights, Moscow Fashion Week offered a broad picture of the industry’s diversity, from experimental graduate collections to designers reinterpreting traditional Russian dress, intricate lacework and heritage textiles.

There were collections that celebrated history, others that embraced bold contemporary silhouettes, and presentations that demonstrated how fashion can tell stories without relying on words.

Together, they reinforced the idea that while technology may influence how clothes are designed, produced and marketed, the industry still thrives on the ability to communicate something meaningful through what we wear.

And then, of course, there was Moscow itself.

While I had come for the fashion, our daily strolls from the Ararat Park Hotel, where we were staying, to the various show venues became an experience of their own. Along the way, we enjoyed the city’s remarkable sights, including Red Square and its surrounding historic buildings.

There is something beautiful about walking through a city where history and modern life sit so comfortably alongside each other. Moscow’s architecture, grand streets and rich cultural character provided a fitting backdrop.

I returned for the clothes, the designers and the conversations, but left with an even greater appreciation of the city. Moscow’s beauty is, in my view, underrated, and experiencing it on foot made that realization even sweeter.

If the BRICS+ Fashion Summit was about imagining where fashion is headed, Moscow Fashion Week was a reminder of what makes it worth watching in the first place: the people, the stories, the culture and the creativity behind every collection.

AI may well become an indispensable part of the industry’s future. But as long as fashion continues to draw from human experience, cultural memory and individual imagination, I suspect its soul will remain firmly in human hands.

From France to Italy, Spain, and Portugal, citizens are taking to the streets over rising living costs, housing shortages, economic inequality, and government policies. Students, workers, and trade unions are demanding change. Some demonstrations have resulted in violent confrontations, arrests, injuries, and destruction of property.

These scenes are familiar to Africans. Kenya’s Gen Z demonstrations against taxation and corruption, Nigeria’s protests over economic hardship, and Tanzania’s election-related unrest reflect concerns not entirely different from those troubling European citizens. But something interesting happens when we examine how governments are judged for responding to such unrest.

When protests erupt in Europe, international discussions frequently centre on economic grievances, policing and political dissatisfaction. When similar events occur in Africa, the language may shift towards democratic failure, human rights violations, political legitimacy, and possible international sanctions.

Why? Are these differences always justified by circumstances, or does a country’s international standing influence the judgement?

We frequently discuss inequality between rich and poor, between social classes and between the Global North and Global South. But what about inequality within the international system itself? The international order is founded upon principles of sovereignty, human rights, and equality among nations.

Yet equality in principle does not necessarily translate into equality in practice.

Consider the United Nations. Its Charter recognises the sovereign equality of member States, yet five permanent members of the Security Council possess veto powers unavailable to other countries.

Consider France, where recent demonstrations have involved serious confrontations between protesters and security forces. Allegations of excessive police force, including injuries to young demonstrators, have prompted criticism and investigations.

Now consider Kenya’s 2024 demonstrations against the Finance Bill, during which protesters were killed, and serious allegations of unlawful police conduct emerged. Both situations raise legitimate questions about citizens’ rights and the appropriate use of State force.

Yet France is a major economic power and permanent member of the Security Council. Kenya occupies a very different position within international economic and diplomatic relationships. Does this difference influence the international consequences of domestic unrest?

Historian Tariq Ali recently compared contemporary unrest with the worldwide upheavals of 1968, when students and workers challenged established authority across Europe, America, and Asia. Interestingly, this occurred when several African and Asian countries had recently achieved independence. But political independence did not automatically produce equality within the international system. Newly independent nations entered international financial, diplomatic, and security arrangements largely established before they acquired political sovereignty. Nearly 60 years later, how much has changed?

There is also a lesson for African governments and political movements seeking external alliances to resolve domestic disagreements. International partnerships may be useful, but powerful countries pursue their own interests. Africa must, therefore, strengthen its capacity to resolve political differences internally, protect citizens’ rights, and negotiate international relationships without excessive dependency.

This interrogation neither condemns European governments nor excuses African governments. But if justice, accountability, and human dignity are universal principles, should their application depend upon a country’s economic or geopolitical influence?

Perhaps contemporary demonstrations offer an opportunity to examine not only how individual countries are governed but also how the world itself is governed. When Europe protests, it is a political crisis. When Africa protests, is it a governance crisis? If the principles are universal, should the standards not be universal, too?