For whatever reason, the designers who receive the most praise, even in Turkey, tend to be foreign. And in fact, it is these same foreign designers who guide the direction of global fashion trends. Their names, and the countries from which they hail, are known all over the world; the designers themselves become sort of cultural ambassadors. The collections that these well-known designers create relay to the world the stories of their nations, their traditions, their cultures, their ways of life. After all, design is not only visual; it is a culture. It is a way of expressing how you feel about an experience or a way of life.
Sevan Bıçakçı is one of the rare people making his name -- and thus Turkey’s -- known in this arena. His jewelry is known on a global level. And his newest collection seems poised to make his name even more widely known.
Inspiration from the Kaz Mountains
Bıçakçı’s new IDA collection is made up of 53 very special pieces and boasts thousands of precious stones. The collection manages to place the wealth of these lands at our fingertips. It is quite possible to see what inspires Bıçakçı -- who commented that he has “used the rich cultural heritage of this soil to nourish his imagination for nearly seven years” -- in every piece of this new collection. “This time, it is the region of the Kaz Mountains -- historically known to some as Mount Ida -- that has provided my inspiration. They lie only six hours from İstanbul and are of entrancing beauty,” he explained. These statements make it clear that this jewelry designer’s works are not only limited to fashion and trends. The Kaz Mountains, with their stately olive trees, crystal-clear waters, famous pine trees and air that smells aromatically of oregano and pure oxygen, are of course a natural treasure. At the same time, they were the stage for a number of legends that shaped the early stories of Troy.
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It is not about the gold, but about the cultural heritage
These days, the Kaz Mountains are remembered mostly for their cyanide and gold. Bıçakçı notes though that though his work is linked to gold, he is interested not in the precious mineral from these lands, but in the cultural heritage. Bıçakçı set out, in bringing the beauty of these lands to fingers and necks in his stone-studded IDA collection, to show that the value of the soil and scenery around the Kaz Mountains was greater than the total value of any gold that could be found. “I will take from Ida its clean air, its stories and its endless inspirations. I will not touch gold,” he said. What his new collection in a sense does is explain that gold is not just a jewelry maker’s dream, but a real cultural value, too.
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These designs are handcrafted and made with great care. Though every piece boasts an incredible number of stones, each one is also quite noble and ancient looking and carries the essential character of this collection. Bıçakçı loves the sparkle of diamonds and shapes his stones like a sculptor would. He engraves tiny cities and columns into his jewelry; you feel like you are walking through a museum just looking at some of the giant stones he uses. The fact that this jewelry can relay so much at one time through these giant historical masterpieces that have been miniaturized and reinterpreted is a significant feat.
Some of the famous names who are fans of Bıçakçı’s designs include Halle Berry, Angie Harmon, Brooke Shields, Kim Raver, Elizabeth Hurley, Liv Tyler, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen, Tory Burch, Celine Dion, Elizabeth Wiatt, Lizzie Tisch and Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II.
