“Slow Fashion” Idea With Fashion Designers Zeynep Özar Berksü & Çağrı Berksü Who Reconcile Nature With Fashion
“ One Square Meter ” is a young brand created by Zeynep Özar Berksü and Çağrı Berksü in accordance with the “ Slow Fashion ” style. Fashionistas who adopt the concept of slow fashion, which is included in the literature by Kate Fletcher, within the framework of respect for nature; they want to contribute to a more humane and longer-lasting, fairer, more peaceful world with their production forms, design perspectives. By making time-defying designs, they offer a timeless and universal perspective, ignoring the uniform imposition of casual fashion.
ZeynepÇağrı Berksü’s greatest gift to fashion lovers, whose inspiration is that women feel stylish and comfortable, is that products produced with quality materials and craftsmanship can be combined for years. They don’t attend fashion weeks, they don’t do fashion shows to bring their quality products together with people. “ Hot Air ” and “Cold Air ” under the names of fashion lovers with two editions per year, the collections of One Square Meter are created every year not from the beginning, but in transition. If you are a One Square Meter customer, you do not need to renew your wardrobe all over again every season. Your imagination is the only limit to creating unique combinations with transitional designs that preserve freshness with new fabrics. In 2020, One Square Meter followers, who pushed to question human relationship with human self and nature, experienced the ease of receiving healthy delivery produced in human conditions and without contact with intermediaries. Consumers; respectful of nature, sustainable, ethical production brands have strengthened the awareness of shopping. Zeynep Özar Berksü and Çağrı Berksü, who saw their followers only as customers, put proposals on the sustainability problem and its solution in the fashion industry, whose influence is increasing in the pandemic process, in the middle.
They are proud to be able to stand up to the normalized order with information and informational publications, which they call “ Friday Facts “. One Square Meter, which builds its goals on logical dreams, shares special artisan models that they produce using the up-cycle method with a boutique in Amsterdam. In October 2019, they participated in Denim Days Festival in Amsterdam with Çalık Denim partnership. The things they want to improve in the fashion industry are very human. If a worker who finishes his shift at 3 a.m. and starts his new shift at 7 p.m. does not sew 2000 products a day, do not be punished, do not use fabrics woven with cotton produced with GMO seeds and whose main ingredient is oil, do not turn a truck textile product into waste every second. Let it be what the value of a product is. No one should be fooled. Let the manufacturer be transparent. Do not buy any product just because it is registered by so-called phenomena; let the story of this brand or product be curious. Let sustainability be considered a realistic process, not romantic and dreamy. Dressing is a need and a beautiful future is possible thanks to clothing preferences consisting of pieces that are produced with respect for nature and from the point of view of problems , feel good and tell precious stories.
Zeynep Özar Berksü and Çağrı Berksü shape the fashion industry in favour of nature from the town of Gömeç in Balıkesir, leaving behind their advertising careers; thinking at a desk of one square meter and producing by having fun.
By: Ebru Cengiz Ergen
Translated by: Ayça Demiray