ART

Istanbul Fashion Week Begins
The international fashion event brought together designers, couturiers, stylists and companies on Wednesday.Istanbul Fashion Week (IFW), an international fashion event bringing together designers, couturiers, stylists and companies in the ready-to-wear and apparel sectors, opened its doors on February 3 with a large turnout from both the country and abroad, raising expectations that Istanbul will become a center of fashion just like Milan, Paris, London and New York.
The official ceremony, which was organized by the Istanbul Ready-to-Wear and Apparel Exporters Association (İTKİB) for the second time this year in cooperation with the Fashion Designers Association (MTD), was attended by Foreign Trade Minister Zafer Çağlayan and famous Hollywood actress Meg Ryan, Turkish daily Today’s Zaman said.The daily quotes Minister Çağlayan as speaking at a press conference ahead of the inauguration ceremony that “Istanbul is currently both a cultural and congress center and great efforts are being exerted to turn the city into a fashion and design center”. “IFW will be an important contribution to this target”, Çağlayan said, adding that a purchasing delegation made up of representatives of 213 firms from 29 countries were also invited to attend IFW, which will be followed by more than 200 press members around the world.President of the Turkish Exporters Assembly (TİM), Mehmet Büyükekşi, remarked that the perception of value added and profit should shift towards consumer-oriented production. “The focus should be on innovation in each and every process of production to create global brands,” he continued.Turkey is the fourth largest textile producer in the world, and its contributions to the economy cannot be ignored, president of İHKİB, Hikmet Tanrıverdi said.
“We want to see Turkey shift from being a production country to a design country, he stated, revealing the sector’s goal of making Istanbul one of the top cities in fashion by 2023,” he added.