BURC AKYOL COLL 04 FALL SHOW, FEM

I feel weird speaking for women as a man. Even as a gay man. I don’t have a clue what women think or feel until they tell me, and I love listening and I can have empathy, but I think even that empathy has its limits. I may have some intuitions, but I don’t think I need to understand women, only to let them be and we are many who must learn that lesson still. I learn mine at fittings with my models and my clients, and in the company of such opinionated women as my mother, sisters, aunts, grandmother and some of my very close female friends. Comes then the question of how do you design for women as in find solutions for them? The closest I’ve come to solving that possibly paralyzing question has been by designing for my own femininity from day one. The woman that I would love to be. I don’t want to be one exactly, I mean maybe for a day or some but if I were a woman I know what I would want to wear. It is a close to performance desire, like going on stage. I first desired clothes when I found a pair of trousers which felt feminine, which feminized my skinny teenager silhouette back then. I grew up effeminate. I was mistaken for a girl until the age of ten or eleven. I learnt belly-dancing with my aunt with video cassettes to the point where my grandparents hid them because they were scared that the practice would turn me gay. I went and watched them over and over in secret. I imitated women’s postures, their voices, and their manners until they became mine. I wore make up an