Iranian Canadian Fashion Innovator Golnar Ahmadian Opens Up About Her Ready-to-Wear Line Golshaah
The shape shifter.
For fashion designer Golnar Ahmadian, mood boards and runway trends hold little sway over her ready-to-wear line, Golshaah. Rather, it is the quiet tension of an all-important daily question—what to wear when grabbing a latte—that inspires her designs. “It’s on my mind constantly,” she says, nodding to the cultural ritual of a caffeine break in Iran, where she was born and raised, and in Toronto, where she’s lived since 2018.
In both places, she meets likeminded people to exchange dreams over coffee—sharing desserts and design strategies that shift by location, from maple-glazed doughnuts to delicate trays of noon khame-i (Iranian cream puffs). “Everything revolves around meeting for coffee,” she explains. “It’s a constant social motivator and a fashion inspiration that will never go away,” she adds. “One of the first questions my friends, family, and clients also ask of an outfit is “Can I wear it for a coffee?” After that, we wonder, Can I wear it out too? For a day of shopping? At a cocktail? For a party? But the first priority is always coffee.”
It’s no wonder clients from café and fashion capitals like Milan and Paris gravitate toward pieces such as the supremely cool asymmetrical trench (from her fall/winter 2024 collection) or knee-length upside-down skirt (spring/summer 2025). Throughout much of Golshaah’s latest looks, buyers can see that rejection of old-world boardroom-to-bar routines. Pieces such as her haute-hybrid blazer blouse and a combo item she deems a half skirt trouser certainly don’t ascribe to outdated activities like power lunches—Ahmadian chooses to propel women who buy and wear fashion in a more multi-dimensional way. Her collections distance themselves from fast chain looks, sharpen the focus on tailoring, and spark a kind of sartorial alertness that has been lacking due to a relentless and ceaseless athleisure hitstorm.
It’s a path that has earned Golshaah by Golnar Ahmadian a nomination for the LVMH Prize, a coveted 400,000-euro honour. If her house wins later this year, she will receive a year of mentorship from esteemed jury members, including Sarah Burton, Marc Jacobs, Silvia Venturini Fendi, and Stella McCartney. Being in the pool of could-bes has Ahmadian insisting that she’s already won regardless of whether she snatches the crown. She explains that presenting her collection to a number of fashion giants has already made a world of difference for Golshaah. “To be able to discuss my clothes and get feedback from people I’ve looked up to, experts like Anna Wintour, has already made me feel like I was suddenly seen in the middle of the global fashion map. It was so encouraging to have people like [Dior’s] Jonathan Anderson push me to keep exploring how clothes can translate into every aspect of life—how one outfit can live throughout the day,” she says. “My pieces can be styled in different ways, for different hours, for different intentions, so it feels like I keep going where I need to be.”
Photograph by Irene Hoseinzad
Her latest collection makes that idea tangible. A linen folded coat, its peplums resembling flattened manicotti, reads as an entirely different piece when opened or layered. She points to two recent Golshaah designs that further this approach: “I created a shirt-and-pant look with a collar on the chest. There are six different ways to wear it, so you get this constant transformation—where someone’s personality and my storytelling can interact.” She extends the idea to an entirely new blazer design, which include draped panels at the back of the garment that can be pulled forward or pushed at the side. Each shift creates a new outfit and outlook.
Ahmadian says she’s energized by the possibilities of multifunctional clothing. “People aren’t just one thing, so why should their clothes be? I studied architecture and art, so I’m not just a clothing designer,” she says, adding that her multi-disciplinary designer heroes include Frank Lloyd Wright and the New York architecture firm of Iranian sisters Gisue and Mojgan Hariri, as well as Mies van der Rohe. “That’s why I call Golshaah a luxury lifestyle brand, not just a fashion house.”
That push toward multiplicity is deeply rooted. The brand’s name is actually a fashion flex on its own as Golshaah combines Golnar Ahmadian’s first name with “shah,” meaning “king” in Persian. While fashion insiders might trace Golshaah’s love of convertible clothing to Iranian style icons such as Googoosh, Queen Farah Pahlavi—who mixed Yves Saint Laurent with Persian pieces—or Ray Aghayan, the legendary costume designer (and Bob Mackie’s longtime partner) who created gowns for Princess Fawzia of Egypt and went on to win an Emmy for costume design with Mackie in 1966—that lineage barely skims the surface of her connection to style.
Instead, the most direct design imprint came from Ahmadian’s boldly dressed mother, whose sense of élan was informed by all of the above yet defined by her daughter as “everyday couture.” She speaks of her mom’s trips to flea markets and boutiques in her home country as fashion treasure hunting, where the statement jewellery she found was so stunning that it inspired her pre-Golshaah accessory line Lo’bat. Yet the fashion story that stands out most for Ahmadian is not something she saw but a tale her mom told her as a child. As a student at Shahid Beheshti University in Tehran, her mother arrived for class in an elaborate coat she had stitched herself that had huge sleeves and a great deal of volume. Though Ahmadian senior adhered to the dress codes of the time, covering all visible skin, she was still barred from entering the school—the powers that be claimed her look drew too much attention.
“It’s an interesting story for me that I keep going back to,” says Ahmadian, whose own looks are multilayered, many of them boasting two to five tiered silhouettes, creating an immediately grand entrance for anyone wearing them. “No matter how much volume or the amount of fabrics and layers my mother wore, her statement wasn’t about covering—she dressed herself to attract attention no matter what. I love that about her.” In an era when influence is built on fitting in—or presenting a version the world can digest—Ahmadian’s DNA and design vision both reflect an exacting truth in fashion. In the right hands, clothing does more than create visibility—it amplifies power and signals how you see yourself, inviting others to see you the same way.
