YOUNG TURKS
Fiesty, youthful entrepreneurs are championing cutting-edge fashion in one of Europe’s most historic cities
Text: Alex Rayner
Photos: Tim White; ISS
If you’re strolling around Istanbul and a stylish young photographer comes up, compliments you on your choice of outfit and asks to take your picture, we suggest that you smile and strike a pose — you could be about to join the city’s hottest new fashion movement.
“Street style is about everyday stylishness,” says Dano Alexander, the founder and operations director of the photo blog and fashion events collective, Istanbul Street Style (ISS), “yet sites like ours influence people across the world. Trend scouts and people in the fashion industry use them as a direct reference for their design.”
Originally from San Francisco, Dano began shooting pictures of the Turkish metropolis’s best-dressed inhabitants 18 months ago, approaching his targets in the streets around Taksim Square, and posting the resulting images on the web (www.istanbulstreetstyle.com).
He was following a format established by the likes of London’s Face Hunter (www.facehunter.blogspot.com), and The Sartorialist in New York (www.thesartorialist.blogspot.com). He took a non-judgemental, inclusive approach when it came to selecting his subjects. “It could be anybody — old people, young people, religious, non-religious,” Dano explains, “so long as they’re stylish in some way.”
Soon he began to notice that almost every chic young guy and girl he approached had some involvement in the city’s burgeoning fashion industry. “It was great to connect with these people,” he enthuses. But despite this wealth of talent, Istanbul has neither a formal fashion council nor a fashion week to showcase designers’ creations. Dano and his new friends soon saw that this gave them an opportunity to start organising their own events.
“Once we had this network of creative people, it was time to get them all together,” he says, “we threw our first party at 360 [the renowned Istanbul roof top venue], roughly a year ago.” The party, dubbed Sahane, wasn’t simply a straightforward catwalk show, but instead took in elements of contemporary art, design, and live cookery demonstrations. “It was about getting everyone together,” recalls Alexander, “if you look around, the creativity level here is amazing.”
Perhaps Istanbul’s new prominence within the international fashion scene shouldn’t come as such a surprise. With 10 million inhabitants and a thriving textiles industry, the city has a youthful, growing population and an infrastructure to challenge London or Paris.
“We’re so old because of the Ottomans,” explains Gözde Sezer, ISS’s corporate relations director, referring to the Turkish-ruled empire established in the 13th century, “but we’re so young, because of Ataturk [who founded the modern, secular Turkish Republic in 1923]. Now we can be free, you can go there and do something.”
Despite this enthusiasm, Istanbul’s fashion industry still has some way to go. The city is better known for its leather goods, and many local textile designers work for local fabric manufacturers rather than name-brand ateliers. But change is under way. “It’s got better over the past five to 10 years,” says Gizem Dalyan, ISS’s fashion director, “now people don’t do what they think they should do; they do what they want to do.”
“The authorities are starting to take fashion seriously too,” says Seraphima Onofrei, ISS’s organisational strategist, “they set up the Istanbul Fashion Academy to help designers. It’s gained millions of euros in EU funding.” Mirroring this trend, ISS’s events have gone from strength to strength. “For the first few we thought there would be a few hundred people coming,” says Seraphima, “then two thousand people turned up.” The team held a fashion film festival in a deconsecrated Armenian church in April and have another Sahane event planned for June. “We’re going to have runway shows, cocktail parties, ateliers, boutiques, hair and make-up events,” Dano says, “we’ll curate films, have stuff with established designers; it’ll be a well-rounded experience.”
ISS has also recently started a collaboration with Levi Strauss, redesigning the jeans brand’s off-the-peg items and developing them into works of Turkish haute couture.
Though the city’s fashion industry is relatively small and new, its ambitions are nearly boundless. It’s hard to disagree with Dano when he says: “It’s Istanbul’s time.”
ISS’s favourite Istanbul Shops
- Atlas Pasaji just off Istiklal Caddesi
- CHIC boutique just down from Galatasaray Lisesi
- The Spice Bazaar
- PAG in Nisantasi
- Kanyon