Merve Kahveci

Festival Runway Designer — Academic (Bahçeşehir, Bilgi and Kültür Universities)

Merve Kahveci is a fashion designer and lecturer whose expertise in fashion design pairs many years of industry experience with a parallel academic career. She has won a range of awards in national and international design competitions, and has developed a research-driven production practice through collaborations with local and international professionals from different disciplines.

She teaches in the fashion design departments of long-established educational institutions. At her Istanbul-based studio she also creates bespoke pieces that bring design and craftsmanship together, and runs workshops and creative education programmes centred on the permeable relationship between fashion and art.

For the festival fashion programme's runway presentation themed “Tortu: From the Local to the City”, she designed the collection “Palimpsest: Datça's Living Archive”.