An elegant journey with the Republic's second lady

The clothes and accessories worn by a leading culture and style icon in the early Republican years are on display at the heart of Turkish fashion.

The exhibition, “The Story of a Republic Told by Clothes,” features garments owned by Mevhibe İnönü, the wife of Turkey’s second president, İsmet İnönü.

Running until Nov. 30 at the renovated Sadrazam Sait Paşa Konağı in Nişantaşı, a building furnished with cutting-edge technologies that houses the Istanbul Fashion Academy, or IMA, the exhibit tells two parallel stories.

One of these stories is that of an important woman in society and the other is that of an entire era, going back to the decline of the Ottoman Empire and the beginning of the modern Turkish Republic. Including 38 elegant dresses that Mevhibe İnönü wore as the wife of the first prime minister and the second president of Turkey, the collection reveals some of the major fashion trends in the Republic’s early years.

Included in the exhibition is the outfit İnönü wore at the first ball at Pembe Köşk, the home of the İnönü family in Ankara; the nationalist outfit specific to the Kütayha region that she wore at a ball attended by Turkish Republic founder Mustafa Kemal Atatürk; a skiing outfit, her riding habit and her accessories, including a suit and the first hat that İnönü ever put on.

An example of Turkish elegance

Among the female visitors to the show was Zeynep Keşepli, a retired dressmaker, who was impressed by İnönü’s style, which she described as elegant and polite.

Keşepli had met İnönü at the Thermal Hotel when she vacationed in the western province of Yalova, 38 years ago. The two women had a tea party, listened to music and gossiped.

Saying İnönü was a great role model who was devoted to her family life and will remained loved in every household, Keşepli called the president’s wife the best example of how a polite and elegant Turkish woman should be. “I wish I could be as good as Mevhibe İnönü, but I can’t,” she said.

The exhibition shows that İnönü liked to wear beige and brown clothes and that throughout her life, her size never changed. She could put on a dress she wore three decades previously and it would still fit.  

Bridal heritage for the next generation

The most striking piece in the collection is the wedding dress that İnönü wore at her marriage ceremony in 1916. At that time, there were many French fashion houses in Istanbul’s Beyoğlu district. The one that designed İnönü's wedding dress was called Maison de Blanch.

İnönü’s granddaughter Gülsün Bilgehan Toker wore the same bridal dress to her own wedding in 1980. After 70 years, only the lining of the dress had been damaged, the rest remains in good condition.

This special collection is being displayed for the second time in its 85-year-long history. The first showing was at the vineyard house Pembe Köşk, which was purchased by İsmet İnönü in 1924. Mevhibe İnönü’s outfits and accessories were taken out of the Pembe Köşk and brought to Istanbul with special permission from İnönü’s daughter Ozden Toker, who now leads the İnönü Foundation.

The Pembe Köşk was restored and opened to visitors in the form of a museum by the İnönü Foundation. Personal belongings and artifacts of the İnönü family are exhibited there.

At first, Toker was unwilling to reveal her family’s memories because her mother had preferred to keep their past private. She later approved the exhibit of the clothes because they demonstrate the importance of Atatürk’s values and the reforms of the Republic to younger generations. These reforms can be traced back through unknown aspects of her family’s life.

Indication of cultural loss

The clothes on display not only tell the story of the fashion during the Republic period, but also silently reveal how younger generations have moved away from the Republic’s core values in their own fashion choices.

According to Nilüfer Ayvaz, a fashion designer who visited the exhibition, Turkey has taken several steps back from the cultural gains made during Atatürk’s era of clothing reform.

“If you look at the showcase in a garment store, you see how much we have changed since the early days of the Republic,” she said. “Today, new generations like to follow collections by European designers. The reforms are being forgotten.”

Emel Yıldız, a retired history teacher, agreed with Ayvaz. “Society has lost most of its cultural gains because Istanbul has turned into a huge cosmopolitan city,” she said. “We are gradually losing the style because the climate in the city has changed drastically.” Yıldız attributes these changes to the mass immigration of people from Anatolia to the city.

Tülay Çiftçioğlu, a retired public notary, believes that Turkish society has already lost its culture. “We are continuously changing,” she said. “The elegant years remain in the past. Our culture gave way to a degenerated culture.”

Cemil Yıldız, a senior administrative official of the İnönü Foundation, said not only the younger generations, but older ones as well, have lost the soul Turkey gained with Atatürk’s clothing reform.

“Mevhibe İnönü led the way on what to wear in that era,” he said. “She was a good example of what, where and how Turkish women should wear clothes.”

Republican woman stands by her man

The exhibition was curated by Oylum Öktem İşözen, the academy’s art director and a promising artist, who believes every dress that İnönü wore had a balanced style and its own classical line.

“All of her clothes have similar classical lines. She was also good at combining embroidery and sewing into a masculine style,” she said.

İşözen said the exhibition was not only a retrospective of clothes of the era but also a decisive way to show what a strong Republican woman was like. “[İnönü] never fell behind her husband,” İşözen said. “She stood by a strong man who was one of the two most important figures in the history of the Republic.”

According to the curator, İnönü chose her clothes from a collection of European designers who were famous during that era. “She wore clothes designed by Balenciaga,” she said. “Her dresses were also stitched by local dressmakers, mostly girls who studied at the vocational schools established by İsmet İnönü.”