ENGLISH
Şahin’in defilelerinde genellikle bir tema yarattığının altını çizen gazete, defilelerdeki modelleri ise uzun saçları ve dövmeleriyle Türk modacıya benzetti.
Milan’ın kadrosuna yeni bir yıldız kattığını başlık olarak veren Gazete’ye, 14 yaşında ilk dövmesini yaptırdığında babasından çok azar işittiğini söyleyen Şahin, o yaşlarda ailesinin aşırı derecedeki ilgisinden rahatsız olduğunu anlattı. Tasarımlarıyla moda dünyasında dikkatleri üzerine çeken Şahin, New York Times’a yalnızca bir tasarımcı olarak kalmak istemediğini, asıl hedefinin bir marka olmak olduğunu söyledi.
Yazının orijinal metini aşağıda bulabilirsiniz.
YOU could hear the buzz of the tattoo artist at work before you could see him. In a dark warehouse on the outskirts of 
Milan on Monday evening, black curtains separated the editors from the models in the moments before Umit Benan Sahin was to show a collection that would be described as the breakout of the men’s wear season.
Before the curtains parted, the fashion cognoscenti seemed a little unsure whether or not Mr. Sahin, though obviously a rising star in the men’s scene, was the real deal.
In addition to his three-year-old signature line, just called Umit Benan, Mr. Sahin, 31, has also been the designer of Trussardi since July. Though his first women’s collection for that house was well received, his men’s show for Trussardi last Sunday was a bit of a dud. It took its inspiration — the 1970s Formula 1 racer Jackie Stewart — so literally that the suits with flared pants and wide, curving lapels looked identical to what you could find in a thrift store.
Mr. Sahin’s early notoriety came from his quirky presentations of designs, usually in a bar with themes like “third-generation Italians,” “investment bankers” and “retired rockers.” The models looked somewhat like him, with scraggly dark beards and a lot of tattoos.
This season he was showing his line on a runway for the first time, and promising a lot of sportswear options, the mark of a grown-up designer. The chief executive of a major luxury store sat browsing disinterestedly at Words With Friends on an iPad. Then the curtains parted.
Mr. Sahin had created a scene that looked like an army barracks, with models posing on cots, doing push-ups or shaving. One was getting an actual tattoo. Another was taking a shower, his posterior exposed to the audience. Mr. Sahin explained that he was picturing a moment, just after a war has ended, when the troops were preparing for a group portrait. It looked like a collection as envisioned by Paul Cadmus.
“When I work on a collection, characters are really important to me,” Mr. Sahin said before the show. “They have to have a story behind them.”
Interestingly, it is Mr. Sahin’s story that people seem eager to know about. Daniel Peres, the editor of Details, described him as not only a great designer, but also a great guy. Terry Jones, the editor of i-D, is fascinated with Mr. Sahin’s tattoos, which in their own way tell his life story.
Born in Germany and raised in Turkey, Mr. Sahin studied fashion at several colleges, and at the textiles company of his father, Selahattin Sahin, in Istanbul. He had a troubled childhood, he said, uncomfortable with the close attention paid to him by his parents. After he moved out, to attend a boarding school in Switzerland, he got a tattoo on his back of an angel holding a heart. He was 14 at the time.
“My father was so angry,” he said. “If I wasn’t doing what I do today, and still living in Turkey, I would have problems with my father.”
He pushed up the sleeves of his jacket to reveal more than 30 tattoos covering both arms. Some were drawings. Others were small, neatly written words, in various languages, fonts and sizes, some in capital letters, others in cursive. One said, “When I was a little boy, my mother always called me the devil with an angel’s face.” Another said, “Nothing is as it seems.” The date of his first presentation, “the day I did something on my own for the first time in my life,” he said, is tattooed on his right arm as “13.01.09.” Above that, on his bicep, is an image of his father.
“I was smart to do a tattoo of his face, because he could not say much after that,” Mr. Sahin said.
With his collection on Monday, Mr. Sahin seemed to silence his critics again. It included some of the best takes on military uniforms seen in Milan in some time, with oatmeal-gray cargo pants and precisely structured suit jackets in thick loden wool, one of which closed just an extra inch or so off to the side. They were, in essence, simply wearable clothes, but the way he presented them made them compelling in a broader way, just as Mr. Sahin had intended.
“Now I think people see me as a designer, and the people who buy my clothes are the ones who really follow the fashion world, so I need to expand,” Mr. Sahin said. “I need to start becoming more like a brand than just a designer. The machine has to start working like a brand, not just based on one character.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/fashion/umit-benan-sahins-breakout-show-in-milan.html
