문화와 패션에 대해 부냐민과 라미아 아이딘 (Bunyamin and Lamia Aydin)(레스 벤자민 - Les Benjamins)과 인터뷰

Thank you. I'm ready, okay, ready, yeah, yeah, okay. So, welcome to Korea. How did you find Seoul? This is your first time coming here. So far, how was your journey? You want to go first?

You want to add to it?

Yeah, it was a dream since 2002 World Cup for me, you know. Turkey and Korea were supporting each other. And yeah, since I was a child, I wanted to come here, and it's kind of a dream come true.

What do you think about the culture here, especially the generations and youth culture?

So let's talk about you guys. How did you guys meet and where did the idea come from to start Les Benjamins?

So we met in my fashion show. Yeah, she was sitting front row and I was like, who's this girl sitting there? Seven years ago, I think. Seven years ago. And yeah, did I meet you there? Yeah, we met, hello. And then we had friends in common, so we started hanging out together.

And how I found... I actually launched the brand around 2011. I was back then only 21 years old, and I was just doing t-shirt designs and hoodies and sweats. It wasn't much of a thing. But once I gained experience and since I love fashion since my childhood, I was like, you know what, I want to be a fashion designer. I want to do ready-to-wear. I want to show that I'm not just doing streetwear. So I did my first fashion show, and then it evolved from there, you know, Istanbul and Milan and then to Paris. It all started with me wanting to create my own brand, and we are now designing.

How did you involve all this process?

You really put your DNA into it because the women's, as you said, it was missing the spirit. Because I love menswear, obviously. Yeah, I love menswear. I also love women's wear, but my specialty is not women's wear. So her coming in, she really puts in her own aesthetic. At the same time, she's also balancing the DNA because it's difficult. You have to balance both. When we have our conversation, sometimes we find the way. Okay, find those all the time.

So where does the name derive from?

Actually from my name. Because I grew up, I was born and raised in Germany in a small town called Neuss, near Dusseldorf. And there, people would call me Benjamin. It's a German version of my name. In Turkey, they called me Benjamin. In the Italian part of Switzerland where I studied at boarding school in Lugano, they called me Benny Amino. So I was like, okay, you guys just name me however you want. Just call me Benji from now on. So my nickname was always Benji at high school because I studied in an international school. It's easier. And Benji suits me. And then I was like, you know what, I want to call my brand 'The Benjamins.' Man, I got so excited. I came to my mother, I'm 21. I found the name, Mom. It's gonna be Benjamins. She's like, don't get too excited. Did you check if you have the patents? And then I checked online the same night. Oh, your mom, thanks so much. And I checked online and I'm like, oh, someone in the US already got it. So I can't call it The Benjamins. And then I had that Facebook moment, you know. The Facebook? No, then I was like, you know what, let me go with the French version because I love Paris. And I went with Les Benjamins. Yeah, Paris is my favorite city. It's always something you can remember. Also, a lot of Turkish culture comes from the French, like our law, our language. There are a lot of French words in our history. We have a lot of French influence. That's why I was like, you know what, French makes sense if English doesn't work. That's true.

So, of course this is hard, but can you guys summarize your brand in one sentence? Maybe you can say, since you're... I was thinking about it. There's something small, a slogan maybe.

Which one? East, no. East, no. And again, it's a brand from the East for the Youth, for you, our youth, you know. It's like the brand is always giving back to the young generation. So I would say, an Eastern brand for Eastern youth. It's like our slogan.

Okay, so you have stated that your platform is how you want to be today. How have you made a true impact with that statement so far?

Always the feedback that you get from your activities in the East... When you said that, I remember one. Do you have one?

It's always... I think when you have the consciousness, no matter what, fashion, art, or other things, if you're expressing this through these kinds of disciplines, I think you're taking your responsibility to the community. Yeah, everything we do, it's a big responsibility. Us being here for holiday is also kind of a responsibility because you're building a bridge between the cities. True. So every step we take, we think about it 100 times, 200 times, because people are watching, you know. And yeah, always on you now. That's true. It's important to take the fashion scene forward for our region. At least that's what motivates me.

That's exciting. It is exciting. That's the truth. There is now like a specific blessing and a curse at the same time. Yeah. True, right. Oops. Okay, so how does Les Benjamins embody the ever-evolving youth culture both within the collection itself and the culture of the brand? Maybe we just talked about this, but maybe you can explain specifically.

I think you go first.

Like how does it... How do you make the balance between being a clothing brand and representing the community?

It's a very difficult... You know, it's funny. I'm gonna give an example. When I started DJing five years ago, it helped me a lot with this subject as well. Because when you're DJing, you want to play what you want, but you also need to listen to the crowd. But you also can't switch immediately to that song. You have to blend constantly. So knowing how to blend, I learned with DJing a lot. It's really good. DJing is all about that. We talked about it with you too. You want to DJ too. So that helped me so much. It's crazy how another art form can inspire you to design. And DJing is the perfect example because you can start playing with jazz, you can move from jazz to techno, and from techno you can end up with hip-hop. But how you do the transition is the key. Because if you do it too hard, you can upset the crowd. If you stick to one song too much, it's boring. That's how I do it too, you know. We do a lot of community-based stuff, but in the end, we're also a brand. We need to sell products. So it's a balance. But I think my rule is like a 60-40 rule. I like to do what I want for 60 to 70 percent, community-based, and then the 30 to 40 percent is to maintain the business and grow the business. I never want the business to take over the creative side, because you have an idea. It's very important to protect it.

From celebrities like Justin Bieber to Jay-Z, a lot of celebrities, and also Offset, right? They wear your pieces. What do you look for in consumers of your brand? What is your target audience?

Yeah, and like I said, we introduced a lot of tailoring pieces, and it attracts an older audience as well. Because you started as a streetwear brand. Also, Lamia has been doing a great job with her handbags, the leather boots collection, jewelry that we introduced. The sunglasses are going crazy. It went from Young Thug to Offset to Cuervo to... I don't know, Tiger? I don't know what's happening. Suddenly it went to all of them. But yeah, because we really believed in all of those categories, we didn't even have to push them. So the bag, the first ones were during the pandemic. Everyone's mood was down, and we're like, what can we do? So we had this style called the Lulu. We did the mini one and we dropped it. My nickname, I love it. So I named the bags after my friends. And this one I loved so much, I was like, man, you should use her name. Maybe it'll sell. So it's cool. I'm trying to use Turkish Arabic names but make them international in a way. So we dropped 15 colors, one by one, online, and it sold out. And I was like, this is going very well. And now it really sells out like crazy. So we're very happy with everything that we're doing.

You're extending your product scale and also the product range, right?

Yeah, yeah. So she was the nose of our fragrance as well. It's from our culture. You know, we love when you use perfume mixing. So we decided to do ten scents. And you should explain how you came up with it. It's your mother, actually, right?

I never knew that you could mix perfume, for example. It never comes to your mind, but actually it makes sense.

So Les Benjamins has been how many years? 10 years? Over 10 years? 11 years? A decade, right? So where do you hope to take the brand in the next 10 years? Because everything that you're doing is actually for the future as well. How far can you go with your plans now?

It's funny that you asked this because we had this workshop with the team. And we did like... Lamia was part of it as well. We all sat down and we did like three years, five years, ten years plans. Yeah, with the team. We did a workshop just to come up... not that we will do exactly what we're gonna do, but it's good to know, of course. What we want to do is manifestation, goals. It's a real brainstorm. For me, it was like a two-day workshop. We've just done it one month ago. And we wrote down where we want to have stores, collaborations we want. Like the brand that I told you about, for example. Stuff like that. We put them down. We even wrote the streets where we want to open stores. Like in Berlin, we want to open in Neuss, which is in the Mitte area, which we're planning to open actually next year. London, we're planning to open in Soho. Open a couple more stores in key cities. The dream is to open one here as well.

I was going to ask that.

But on the cultural part, we definitely want to expand our story not just to Turkey and the Middle East. We want to expand it to the Far East, to Berlin, to London. Not just a retail store. If you think about it, we're doing a lot of things. When we were in London, we were explaining to some people what we do, and they're like, 'You do all of this?' We're like, yeah. We have a lot of activations. It's not just a retail store. We don't just sell clothes. We do a lot of stuff for the culture, for the community. It's a lot of events, a lot of workshops. It's like the radio that we had. So instead of doing a party for the opening, we decided, you know what, let's do a radio where we actually are talking. People are bored of just going to a party. We all go, we have some drinks, but it's not deep enough. How can we get more deep? So what we did was an upcycling workshop with Altan Toddler, who's our friend. She's a multi-disciplinary artist from Istanbul. We did the radio with Hot Click Mac. And then we did all of these things. And it's just a deeper conversation. It's not just selling. At the workshop, we said, bring your old clothes. It doesn't even need to be Benjamins. Just bring your old clothes and let's add some stuff. It's like upcycling. And these kind of ideas excite us actually. That's what we love to do. It makes fun, it makes sense, but it's fun. We gotta have fun.

Okay, I want you to tell me, let's close the interview with one song from each of you. A song. Yes, let's pick a song. What would you choose?

I know which one you're gonna choose. Like, 'Feel It Now' by... if you're crucial.