Purple Magazine
— S/S 2011 issue 15
Yaz Bukey
Portrait by Ami Sioux
interview by CAROLINE GAIMARI
portrait by AMI SIOUX
CAROLINE GAIMARI — Are you really the descendent of an Egyptian king?
YAZ BUKEY — Yes. He was an officer in the Ottoman Army at the end of the 1700s. In the Ottoman Empire, the better you performed your work, the higher your status became. So the Sultan made him King Muhammad Ali of Egypt. The family reigned until King Farouk, the last king of Egypt, who lasted until the coup d’état in 1953. For the last 20 years we’ve been in a legal battle with the Egyptian government to recover the palaces and the land we owned. My grandmother lived in a small apartment and the view gave onto the palace where she grew up, which is now a museum. It’s horrible for my family. Most of them have left.
CAROLINE GAIMARI — Your family traveled a lot, right?
YAZ BUKEY — My father was a diplomat so we moved every three or four years — to Algeria, to Saudi Arabia, to Egypt. My father became the Turkish ambassador to Saudi Arabia when he was 26, the youngest ambassador to Turkey ever. I lived in Turkey for four years and went to the Lycée Français. I’ve lived in Paris for exactly 20 years. I came here at 17 to study and was supposed to stay for only three years.
CAROLINE GAIMARI — Is your family proud of you?
YAZ BUKEY — That took a very long time to happen. When I decided to study fashion, my mother said, “Perfect. You can come back and sew the hems onto pants on the streets of Istanbul.” For them fashion is a service job. I’d have loved to do hair or make-up professionally, but that was out of the question — even thinking about it was.
CAROLINE GAIMARI — Your sister Emel moved to Paris as well, didn’t she?
YAZ BUKEY — We lived in Paris together when we started our fashion project Yazbukey. We had no money. The two of us lived in a 32-square-meter apartment, sleeping in the same bed, doing the production, designing the collection, and screen-printing t-shirts, all at home. There were times where we had five people working for us in that apartment — one desk was set on the toilet! I’d gather scraps of leather and fur and we’d embroider and weave on top of them. It would take me a week to do one belt!
CAROLINE GAIMARI — How did you start designing?
YAZ BUKEY — I studied industrial design, and specialized in perfume bottles. I wanted to do something with fashion. A friend told me to go see Marie Rucki, the director of Studio Berçot, who told me I could study there for my final year. I never made any perfume bottles. But I know that someday I will, for a Yazbukey perfume. Right now it’s one project after another. I’m going to launch the Yazbukey Home Sweet Home collection of objects I designed. The idea is to have objects for different tastes all mixed together — on a mantle you could have Plexiglass reproductions of a ’50s mirror, Chinese Foo Dog sculptures, and candle-holders.
CAROLINE GAIMARI — When will that come out?
YAZ BUKEY — We’ll launch as a limited edition at Colette to see how it does. A color-blind guy produces it — so sometimes there are nice surprises! I’m also starting to work with metal, which is something I’ve always really wanted to do. In the beginning, we wanted the Yazbukey brand to encompass everything in fashion besides clothing: lingerie, shoes, jewelry, bags, hats, gloves, and dog clothing. We used embroidery, leather, Swarovski, fur, etc. Of course, not all the buyers like the eclectic mix. I started to struggle when I became known as Yaz, the girl who does Plexiglass faces. We’ve cut back on our vast variety of products and started different lines, such as Yazbukey Precious, the gold line, which has brought us different buyers and different stores.
CAROLINE GAIMARI — How do you think people will perceive your metal collection?
YAZ BUKEY — It won’t be under my name, and in the beginning I won’t tell anyone that it’s me doing it. People have a hard time accepting that I can do a very figurative product and then do something completely different.
CAROLINE GAIMARI — You’re working with Zac Posen, right?
YAZ BUKEY — I’m doing the bags for his second line, Z Spoke, and the jewelry for Zac Posen and Z Spoke. For Z Spoke, Zac asked me to do colored Plexiglass stuff. Once I saw the completed pieces, I thought they didn’t go well with the collection, that there was too much color. So I painted them in bronze. They leave me really free to do what I want, which I love.
CAROLINE GAIMARI — Are you really the descendent of an Egyptian king?
YAZ BUKEY— Yes. He was an officer in the Ottoman Army at the end of the 1700s. In the Ottoman Empire, the better you performed your work, the higher your status became. So the Sultan made him King Muhammad Ali of Egypt. The family reigned until King Farouk, the last king of Egypt, who lasted until the coup d’état in 1953. For the last 20 years we’ve been in a legal battle with the Egyptian government to recover the palaces and the land we owned. My grandmother lived in a small apartment and the view gave onto the palace where she grew up, which is now a museum. It’s horrible for my family. Most of them have left.
CAROLINE GAIMARI — Your family traveled a lot, right?
YAZ BUKEY — My father was a diplomat so we moved every three or four years — to Algeria, to Saudi Arabia, to Egypt. My father became the Turkish ambassador to Saudi Arabia when he was 26, the youngest ambassador to Turkey ever. I lived in Turkey for four years and went to the Lycée Français. I’ve lived in Paris for exactly 20 years. I came here at 17 to study and was supposed to stay for only three years.
CAROLINE GAIMARI — Is your family proud of you?
YAZ BUKEY — That took a very long time to happen. When I decided to study fashion, my mother said, “Perfect. You can come back and sew the hems onto pants on the streets of Istanbul.” For them fashion is a service job. I’d have loved to do hair or make-up professionally, but that was out of the question — even thinking about it was.
CAROLINE GAIMARI — Your sister Emel moved to Paris as well, didn’t she?
YAZ BUKEY — We lived in Paris together when we started our fashion project Yazbukey. We had no money. The two of us lived in a 32-square-meter apartment, sleeping in the same bed, doing the production, designing the collection, and screen-printing t-shirts, all at home. There were times where we had five people working for us in that apartment — one desk was set on the toilet! I’d gather scraps of leather and fur and we’d embroider and weave on top of them. It would take me a week to do one belt!
CAROLINE GAIMARI — How did you start designing?
YAZ BUKEY — I studied industrial design, and specialized in perfume bottles. I wanted to do something with fashion. A friend told me to go see Marie Rucki, the director of Studio Berçot, who told me I could study there for my final year. I never made any perfume bottles. But I know that someday I will, for a Yazbukey perfume. Right now it’s one project after another. I’m going to launch the Yazbukey Home Sweet Home collection of objects I designed. The idea is to have objects for different tastes all mixed together — on a mantle you could have Plexiglass reproductions of a ’50s mirror, Chinese Foo Dog sculptures, and candle-holders.
CAROLINE GAIMARI — When will that come out?
YAZ BUKEY— We’ll launch as a limited edition at Colette to see how it does. A color-blind guy produces it — so sometimes there are nice surprises! I’m also starting to work with metal, which is something I’ve always really wanted to do. In the beginning, we wanted the Yazbukey brand to encompass everything in fashion besides clothing: lingerie, shoes, jewelry, bags, hats, gloves, and dog clothing. We used embroidery, leather, Swarovski, fur, etc. Of course, not all the buyers like the eclectic mix. I started to struggle when I became known as Yaz, the girl who does Plexiglass faces. We’ve cut back on our vast variety of products and started different lines, such as Yazbukey Precious, the gold line, which has brought us different buyers and different stores.
CAROLINE GAIMARI — How do you think people will perceive your metal collection?
YAZ BUKEY — It won’t be under my name, and in the beginning I won’t tell anyone that it’s me doing it. People have a hard time accepting that I can do a very figurative product and then do something completely different.
CAROLINE GAIMARI — You’re working with Zac Posen, right?
YAZ BUKEY — I’m doing the bags for his second line, Z Spoke, and the jewelry for Zac Posen and Z Spoke. For Z Spoke, Zac asked me to do colored Plexiglass stuff. Once I saw the completed pieces, I thought they didn’t go well with the collection, that there was too much color. So I painted them in bronze. They leave me really free to do what I want, which I love.
