Where does inspiration come from? For Derya Issever and Cimen Bachri of the much-fancied fashion label, it can come from the most unlikely sources: the starting point of their latest collection was a “built-overnight” architecture style they discovered on their travels in Istanbul. “There would be a cute wooden house with an ugly concrete block placed on top, and on top of that a wooden shed with a metal box. It’s like Tetris. We tried to incorporate this into the collection by using a lot of different materials in one item.”
The duo’s actual garments achieve beautiful order from those haphazard references. The Issever Bahri watchwords, they say, are “sophistication with an edge; chic but cool”. Derya and Cimen met at its admissions test at the very start of a fashion design course at the University for Applied Sciences , and completed their final collection as a team. Both have Turkish backgrounds (Greek-Turkish in Cimen’s case) but were born and raised in Berlin. Since then, they’ve gone from strength to strength: their latest collection has doubled in looks (to 30 from 15), while last November they showed at Jakarta Fashion Week by invitation of the Goethe Institut. Might success like that tempt them to seek success in a more traditional fashion capital like Paris?
“Berlin gives you the freedom to concentrate on what you actually want to do while simultaneously allowing you to survive,” says Issever. “We have to go to Parisian fairs to sell our stuff but we can have everything made here, as production companies are opening their doors again to the new wave of Berlin designers,” adds Bachri.
Berlin may be an endless source of inspiration to newcomers, but Issever Bahri are so busy with the label they can’t even remember the last time they went to an exhibition in the city. Nonetheless, the German capital offers them just the kind of reliable and sturdy backbone a striving young label needs – all the frills and fancies can be found elsewhere.
Text by Grashina Gabelmann