The night before Wes Gordon was set to make his New York debut, it seemed fate might be against him. “It was September 2010 and there was a horrible blizzard that night—I kept looking out the window every 30 seconds to see if the snow was sticking,” he tells Style.com. The snow wasn’t the only thing that stuck that season—Gordon, a Georgia-born Central Saint Martins grad, made a lasting impression on the editors and designers (including one his mentors, Oscar de la Renta) who trudged through the arctic weather to see what he had to offer.

Baku—if it’s a name you aren’t familiar with just yet, it’s time to get acquainted. The capital city of Azerbaijan, Baku was not even on fashion’s map until recently. Last month, Tom Ford opened his menswear shop in the Unesco World Heritage Site (with a women’s store in the works), and just prior to that, The Emporium opened its doors in the ancient city, with an impressive list of brands rushing in, Givenchy, Chloé, 3.1 Phillip Lim, Victoria Beckham, Christopher Kane, and Acne among them.