ISTANBUL'S RIBBONED KALEIDOSCOPE

What kinds of meanings may we attribute to our clothes?
Do all items of clothing walk out of your life once worn? Or do they remain a part of their owner, like a beloved shell, leaving traces, suffused with the fragrant bouquet of memory?
An old face, an old piece of music, or a familiar smell or taste, are the flashbacks triggered by clothes… Some details, more dominant have it in them to prompt you to smile or to melancholy. Some things universally experienced.
The clothes of a woman or her mother, aunt, doll, or friend, or perhaps those of a model in a magazine, an actress in a film, or the heroine of the novel… Those that she adores, that she hates, that somehow surprise her, and that she misses. Those that partner a life, or that experience a city. Step by step through the city as lived in its streets, its coastlines, ferries, gardens, houses and schools.
Could a city be reflected in clothes? Istanbul certainly has been.
Bit by bit, the city has been influenced by clothes, or else clothes have influenced the city. It’s impossible to separate one from the other.
All of these clothes secure their place in one’s memory, itself a tranquil or turbulent river… And as they accumulate, they form a personal history. A subjective past populated by those who wore and saw them, their environs, and of course the city that created them.
A dress, a piece of fabric, a hairstyle, a color, a pair of earrings, a belt buckle, or even a humble button or pair of shoes is capable of evoking the deepest dream within one’s heart, and of sparking a life from the past. On occasion such a life may been embellished with shiny ribbons, or else by symbolic ones entangled in unexpected places…
There seem to be so many ribbons in our clothes, in our memories, and in Istanbul… And as I recall such memories; I use binoculars, themselves ribboned to look back on the past of a ribboned city…