TORTU
From the Local to the City
PALIMPSEST
Datça's Living Archive
“Everything is layered not to be seen, but to be able to exist together.”
The runway of the TORTU fashion programme — Design: Merve Kahveci · Curator: Aydan Uzun
August 18 · 7 PM · Runway show
Tortu — sediment — is a layered field of memory formed by the traces time accumulates through place, culture and people. The present state of a geography takes shape upon the times, encounters and transmitted knowledge that came before it. Each era takes a trace from the one before and leaves its own; enduring sometimes on the surface, sometimes in the depths, these traces join over time into a shared memory. Datça's cultural fabric has taken shape within just such an accumulation. Values carried from the past transform as they meet new times; every encounter adds a new layer to this memory. Thus the past does not stay where it was, but gains new meaning within the present. Every trace carried from past to present is read anew in a new context and becomes part of its own time. Tortu carries this idea of continuity and transformation into the conceptual ground of the fashion programme.
Palimpsest: Datça's Living Archive
The palimpsest — a writing surface used again and again — is taken up as a powerful metaphor for the ways the past endures by transforming without being erased. In this collection, which treats Datça as a living cultural archive, fashion designer and academic Merve Kahveci brings together the region's nature, landscape and endemic flora — carried into traditional hand-weaves — with heirloom textiles kept in family chests and the traces of lived time, complementing one another in the collection's design language. Shaped by Kahveci's approach to design and production, the collection reinterprets cultural values and craft in a contemporary fashion language, treating recycling, upcycling, sustainability, deconstruction, layering and zero waste as creative elements that make the traces of the past visible and give surfaces new meaning. Each look becomes a living archive where past and present can be read together.
Show Identity — Knidos
Knidos, at the very tip of the Datça Peninsula where the Aegean meets the Mediterranean, was for centuries a major port city where different civilisations' knowledge, production and ways of life met on the same ground. Today the ancient city's stones, streets and remains form a layered cultural landscape in which the traces left by time can be read together. The show meets its audience within this very layered memory, in the living archaeological landscape of Knidos. Read together with the site where it is presented, the collection reinterprets the cultural continuity of the ancient city in a contemporary fashion language — so Knidos becomes not merely the venue, but the intellectual point of departure and an inseparable part of the narrative.
Collection Flow
Sixteen looks across three narrative layers — each layer reveals a different living archive of Datça.
Layer I — The Memory of Nature
Nourished by Datça's nature and landscape, woven kilims and silk fabrics handled with recycling and zero-waste approaches turn into contemporary silhouettes tracing the shores, the rocky terrain, wind-shaped surfaces and the colour gradients drawn by the sun. The traces nature leaves gain a new narrative on textile surfaces, bringing the material of the past together with the design language of the future.
Layer II — Living Craft
Centring Datça's living shared craft culture and women's labour, this layer reinterprets the region's geographically indicated Bürümcük and Dastar hand-woven cloths through sustainability and layering, with a contemporary understanding of pattern and form. Traditional techniques gain a new life within the language of contemporary fashion, embodying the continuity of cultural transmission.
Layer III — The Legacy of the Chests
Heirloom textiles passed down through generations, carrying the traces kept in local families' chests, are redesigned with zero-waste and upcycling approaches and gain a new life. The marks of time and the details of use present the memory of the past under the name of the owner of the chest each piece came from — personal stories become part of collective memory.
Unfolding across three narrative layers and sixteen looks, the collection reinterprets the cultural values and craft Datça has accumulated in a contemporary fashion language, binding past and future. Just as Knidos has come back into being with different meanings across the centuries, this collection carries the cultural heritage of the past into the present through stories, weaves and traces. Because true sustainability sustains not only materials — but memory, craft, labour and stories.
Because every weave is a story, every trace a memory, and every transformation a new heritage left to the future.
Goals of the Fashion Programme
- 1Building sustainable collaboration models between local producers, artisans and designers
- 2Creating an inclusive structure that places women's labour at the centre of fashion production
- 3Making local crafts visible
- 4Encouraging young designers
- 5Reinterpreting traditional craft techniques through contemporary fashion design
- 6Supporting environmentally conscious design fed by natural, local and endemic materials
- 7Framing shows and presentations as curatorial narrative spaces
- 8Translating Datça's cultural memory into a contemporary aesthetic language through fashion
- 9Creating a holistic fashion experience through interdisciplinary exchange (art, craft, music)
- 10Placing Datça on the international map of culture and design
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