While the world of art and design keeps its sources of inspiration open enough to embrace the whole universe, this time Bünyamin Aydın looks at the issue from the perspective of the workers who enabled the rebuilding of Germany. II. In Germany, where the steps of renewal were taken after the World War II, the creative director centering on the worker’s labor and transformative determination, inspired the Les Benjamins 2022 Autumn/Winter collection: “My grandfather was a welder and he was one of the first workers to go to Germany from Turkey. The fact that he came to Germany from a small village in Eastern Anatolia without illiteracy is still one of the biggest sources of inspiration for me.”
One of the points that provides an opportunity for the collection to reflect an integration of duality and multiplicity is that while the worker migrations from Turkey to Germany in the 1960s were expected to end two years later, the vast majority chose to settle there permanently. . Based on two stories, the collection first tells about leaving Anatolia; Visiting workers in their most beautiful clothes, long goodbyes at the train station meet art, the second part tells about living in Germany; He draws attention to the duality and difference between the work clothes that allow visiting workers to assimilate to their new country and the nostalgic elements of the concept of home they consider sacred at the end of the working day. He didn’t speak German, so their courage to leave everything they knew behind is incredible. Their clothes are almost like military uniforms, so that it becomes their armor. For this reason, this collection is really a reference to those who make me who I am. Like all immigrants, I assimilated while trying to adapt to society. Therefore, it was a collection in which I reflected the answers to these questions on what it is to conform, what is to give up on one’s own identity in my designs.”
In the collection where forms become genderless, wide-legs and custom-made trousers, Turkish Leather vests designed with inspiration from truck drivers, patterned shawls referring to the colorful wallpapers we often encounter in the homes of migrant workers, represent a safe space that evokes origins, traditions and relaxation. The key details brought by the concept of duality, which draw attention in the women’s collection, are a symbol of the combination of many identities that emerge alongside their existence as a migrant worker. At the same time, the patch details in some of the designs in the collection are also a tribute to the migrant workers of other major countries such as South Korea, Greece and Morocco.
