Dilek Hanif
Major player on the Turkish fashion scene, Dilek Hanif is an internationally renowned fashion designer for haute couture and ready-to-wear who, in expressing her country’s creativity and style with talent and energy, emerges as an emblem of modern Turkey. Istanbul, where the designer lives and works, marks the juncture between East and West, forming a crossroads of the entire Middle East.
Dilek Hanif, who grew up in a fashion business family, set out on her own in 1990 with the launch of the “Dilek Hanif Line”, a brand including both haute couture and ready-to-wear collections. After her first fashion show in 2002 in the Saint Irene Church and subsequent awards of the caliber of Avon’s “Most Successful Female Designer” and Oriflame’s “Most Accomplished Woman of the Year,” in 2004 she became the first representative of the Turkish fashion system to be admitted on the official Paris Haute Couture calendar.
Globetrotting traveler and ambassadress of Turkish culture, Dilek Hanif is synonymous with a career full of international success, merging both style and social activities. In 2004, she gave her support to Ralph Lauren’s Fashion Targets Breast Cancer project with a runway show in Ankara; in 2005, she earned the AGED (Association of Alternative Development) award for her contribution to the development of qualitative comprehension in fashion design. She has also won the Beykent University award for Outstanding Communications and the Rotary Club’s Career Honor Award.
Dilek Hanif showed her highly acclaimed spring/summer 2010 Couture Collection during Paris Haute Couture week in January 2010.
Inspiration and Style
In her designs, Dilek Hanif transmits a new sense of contemporary luxury. Her seductive and sophisticated style is highly coveted by prominent figures in Turkey -- among them, First Lady Hayrünnisa Gül. The designer plans to broaden her international horizons more and more, so as to convey through fashion her unique vision and the keen creative spirit of Istanbul outside of her homeland.
From her showroom, atelier and monobrand boutique in the heart of the Nisantasi fashion district, Dilek Hanif dedicates her collection to a dynamic, self-confident, successful woman who opts for elegance and allure with a contemporary twist. Dilek Hanif’s timeless creations represent her vision of “global modern fashion” with a mix of Turkish and Armenian origins that spark constant and wonderfully fresh references to the Ottoman style.
Silk, lace, organza and chiffon feature gorgeous embroideries (all hand-stitched in the Nisantasi atelier) and at the same capture a wholly special love for drapings and for fluid/structured interplays that find definition in expert cuts. While the palette is inspired primarily by soft pastels, Dilek Hanif’s designs come also in intense Ottoman hues and in metallic gold, silver and bronze tones.