How an Indian Hotel Brand Became a Quiet Force at Milan Fashion Week

TCF POST Report

For the third consecutive year, The Leela Palaces, Hotels and Resorts stood alongside Ara Lumière, the venture founded by philanthropist and social entrepreneur Kulsum Shadab Wahab. This time they brought The Phoenix Circle to Milan, along with contemporary artist Raghava KK and a project called PASSPORT.

The women at the center

The Phoenix Circle was built around a simple but demanding promise: to give women survivors of acid and burn attacks a path to dignity, creative expression and livelihood. Through fashion and art, it aims to shift the narrative away from what these women have suffered and toward what they can create.

That shift is the heart of the story. In Milan, the women of The Phoenix Circle were not presented as subjects of sympathy. They were presented as creative voices.

An artist, a theme, a passport

PASSPORT brought together Raghava KK's artistic perspective and the voices of the women at the initiative's core. Its themes were identity and representation: who we say we are, and who the world allows us to be. Set against a global fashion stage, the project asked audiences to look at identity as something people claim for themselves rather than something imposed on them.

Wahab described the larger aim in her own words. The women, she said, should be defined "not by what they have endured, but by their creativity, identity and the futures they are shaping for themselves."

Why a hotel brand is in the room

The Leela's presence may look unexpected at first. But the company, which is celebrating four decades of what it calls True Indian Luxury, argues that hospitality should reach beyond the walls of a hotel. Preeti Makhija, General Manager of The Leela Palace New Delhi, said luxury becomes more meaningful "when it creates space for purpose, dialogue and impact."

By carrying an Indian perspective to a global platform, the partnership connects three worlds: luxury, fashion and social change. Three years in, it has become a sustained commitment rather than a one-off gesture.

The impact

The immediate impact is visibility. A place at Milan Fashion Week gives the women's work an international audience and puts their stories in front of the fashion world on their own terms.

The wider impact is a challenge to how empowerment is understood. The partners say fashion can be a platform for dialogue as well as an art form, and that a luxury brand can use its reach to open doors for others.

For The Leela, which is backed by Brookfield, has 15 operating properties across India and Dubai, and was ranked No. 2 among the world's best hotel brands by Travel + Leisure in 2026, the collaboration shows how a business at the top of its industry can use its influence beyond its core trade.

What comes next

The partnership has now spanned three Milan seasons, with every sign it will continue. If the PASSPORT presentation is any measure, the story it tells is moving forward: from adversity toward agency, one collaboration at a time.