Star Designer: Hakaan Yıldırım
As a fashion-obsessed young man in the early 2000s, I admired Hakaan Yıldırım, the summit of story-filled design. Through Yıldırım’s designs I realised that fashion is not only about getting dressed; it is about creating an identity, making people feel, and sometimes even telling of wounds. Ever since, my bond with his creativity has been admiration not just for a designer, but for a storyteller, a vision.
At the turn of the millennium, I was working as an assistant fashion editor at Marie Claire. When Ece Sükan and I knocked on the door of Hakaan Yıldırım’s office on Abdi İpekçi Avenue in Nişantaşı, I instantly warmed to this captivating persona — the accessories dangling from his jeans, the red string earring, the iconic hairstyle, and a manner as cheerful as it was snobbish, creating a striking contrast. Defiant, rebellious and free-spirited, this man embraced me at once.
“That sentence on the invitation was not only a starting point, but also a poetic note that set the tone of the show.”
“Whatever I managed to do while bringing myself into being, whatever I failed at — or whatever you understood. Dedicated to Sezen Aksu, the one person who has always been by my side, who grew my feelings with her own…” When I saw these words on the invitation, as someone who had witnessed Yıldırım’s musical world up close, I was gripped by excitement: how would he turn the dress culture and imagination he had created over the years into an atmosphere, through music? That sentence in fact summed up his way of life: no explanation, no direction, only a narrative open to the interpretation of whoever feels it.
That sentence on the invitation was not only a starting point, but also a poetic note that set the tone of the show. Through this invisible bond with music, he would turn fashion into a performing art.
I thought back to the years when I witnessed the unforgettable shows of Hakaan Yıldırım, who created so many shows that live on in my memory: among them, his 2007 show “Bir Sefer Sonu” (The End of a Voyage), dedicated to his mother, who set out on her final voyage too young — where, saying “every voyage has an end”, he once again spoke of life from a musical place, and brought the TRT Youth Choir, of which I too had been a member in my youth, onto the fashion runway, opening his magical world to us through the sounds of polyphonic music.
Over the decades, I followed closely the fashion journey of Yıldırım, many of whose shows I attended. I witnessed the ANDAM Award he won in 2010 and his shows in Paris. But who could have known that one day I would perform in one of his shows?
When he said, “I want you to sing Sezen Aksu’s ‘Dört Günlük Bir Şey’ in my show,” I didn’t know what to say. I was at the beginning of my musical journey. This time, I was sharing the emotions of this star designer — who was presenting a haute couture collection to the design world — not as a fashion editor, but with my voice.
In this show, in which I appeared in an iconic pink design, I witnessed how finely Yıldırım weaves music and fashion together, and how he builds haute couture.
“Whatever you understood.” That sentence in fact summed up his way of life: no explanation, no direction. Only a narrative open to the interpretation of whoever feels it.
Before the show, waiting excitedly in the garden of the Four Seasons Hotel Bosphorus, with its sophisticated view of the Istanbul Bosphorus, alongside many friends with whom I had witnessed the fashion world over the years, we all shared the same anticipation: into what emotional atmosphere would Yıldırım — who had made all our stories more beautiful and touched all our worlds — take us?
And the show opened with the dance of the body.
The show opened with a solo dance performance: as the body drew a circle through its movements, there was neither direction nor boundary. Within that circle, everyone found their own meaning. Moving without any need for words, the body made visible Yıldırım’s intellectual stance of opposition. Everything was hidden within the movements, like a secret challenge. The body rejected imposed structures and told us its own reality. That reality was like a strong and calm answer whispered from Yıldırım’s world, a declaration written in the language of the body.
At one point the show turned into a procession; collective repetitions echoing from afar reached the audience as a powerful soundscape. Woven into the show, these sounds guided us not only visually, but aurally and intellectually as well.
Turning fashion into a craft, and craft into an intuitive art, Hakaan Yıldırım offers not only wearable pieces; he builds a narrative of depth. With fashion’s meaning-laden power, woven with intuition and touching the senses, the collection goes beyond form — it does not merely show the narrative, it makes you feel it.
The collection was a call that we completed with our own inner voice, one that expected no explanation: quiet yet determined, graceful yet shattering. Some pieces made us feel rather than explaining. In short, as a viewer, whatever you understood, that’s what it was.
The show’s choreography and production were shaped by the creative vision of show director Uğurhan Akdeniz. Yıldırım’s star team was captivating in its visual, aural, physical and conceptual layers. Mahizer Aytaş, who made every look speak through bearing as much as through fabric, was the collection’s style director. Hair artists Ali Yılancı and Serkan Aktürk and make-up artist Ece Birsen each brought their own creative touch to the collection. This identity was a call to interpretation, to emotion and to freedom.
And what about Dansöz Dünya — the World as a Belly Dancer? The world spinning nimbly, swaying this way and that… At times ironic, at times resigned, but always heartfelt. This manifesto of awareness was the inner voice of Yıldırım, who sees the game, decodes the figure and builds his own stage.
Hakaan Yıldırım is not only a designer; he is one of the most powerful storytellers of contemporary fashion in Türkiye — one who produces memory, builds emotion and speaks his own word to the world through form.