Turk-Couture: The Culture Jacket

Abstract

This project aims to educate the new generation of Turkish fashion designer on the importance of their unique culture and its value as a potential source of design inspiration in a world preoccupied with the western ideal. By working in collaboration with students and craftspeople, this jacket offers an alternative perspective on Turkish design, raising awareness of traditional skills, developing crafts, and reviving and reinventing lost textile heritage such as Sumerbank designs. Moreover, it underlines the necessity of the Turkish fashion industry to develop its own identity, competitive yet compatible with the global market. This intricate jacket highlights the problems impacting on garment producing countries, such as Turkey, due to the escalation of the “Fast Fashion System." It not only emphasises how huge conglomerates are consuming cultures, and imposing the western ideal, but it is a critique of their exploitation of local populations, and abuse of natural resources, to create sub-standard products, unnecessary consumption and vast amounts of preventable waste. TWO CRITICAL QUESTIONS WHICH MY WORK AIMS TO RAISE: This garment seeks to express the paradoxes inherent in the globalization of the fashion industry. While it seems impossible to resist the spread of manufacturing, advertising and consumption models within which this garment, and indeed this conference have been conceived, how is it possible for a local or national fashion industry to still retain a meaningful visual or conceptual connection with the pre-existing local visual cultures? Also, how can young designers and consumers in developing countries move beyond their fascination with bland western mass produced garments, and relish the challenge of new looks that, while remaining resolutely of the present, also reflect their commitment and connection to their own historical culture?