When Aslı Filinta presented her collection at Fashion Week Istanbul in 2019, her pioneering intent, deeply informed by the diversity of her Turkish roots, became clear. Models walked through the sanctuary of the historic Zülfaris Synagogue in garments from Filinta’s world, some with custom-made floral crowns, and all accompanied by live bağlama music. Traditional dowry embroidery, or çeyiz, Kutnu fabric and tel kırma textiles, a technique of weaving and bending flat metallic wires onto fabric, were upcycled into tiered dresses, asymmetric capes and matching sets.
For a designer who had previously drawn inspiration from Rumi’s tale “The Paragon Parrot” and the works of the great Ottoman architect Mimar Sinan, the 2019 runway show appeared to be the culmination of her practice: a showcase of the designer’s evolving creative language, one that embraces her land fully without differentiating between religion, ethnicity or politics.
Years later, living between California and Turkey, Filinta has not budged from this path. Strengthening her conviction is the BİZ Collective, founded in 2025 in Antakya, a region that continues to carry the deepest scars of the 6 February 2023 earthquakes. While travelling through the region and researching women’s cooperatives, Filinta discovered traditional cimem weaving, a fading craft that uses natural wheat stalks to create handmade goods.
Through a collaborative project with an international beauty brand, 10,000 cimem bags designed by Filinta were produced using approximately 40 tonnes of upcycled wheat straw, creating employment for 350 women and training a further 35 young women in the craft. The project offered women an opportunity to rebuild their lives amid devastation through solidarity and collective strength.
Behind BİZ, which translates as “we”, is Filinta’s Collectively Conscious Business Model, or the Filinta Methodology, a collective production framework in which the greater good can be achieved only when participants work in the areas where they are strongest, in meaningful collaboration and through projects conceived not for the advancement of a single actor but in service of the whole.
Within Filinta’s interwoven ecosystem, creative professionals work in design and ideation, master artisans carry the inspiration and training, women’s cooperatives undertake the handwork and global and local brands oversee sales and marketing. Only materials that the soil can readily take back are used.
“It is a system built not on hierarchy, but on complementarity. No one stands above another. Progress moves horizontally rather than vertically,” says Filinta. “I would rather be the designer who produces in limited numbers, keeps a tradition alive, and touches women’s lives, than the one with the largest turnover whose stock waits, unworn, in a warehouse. We are not running a charity — charity is not sustainable. We are building a system where value is designed in from the very first sketch.”
Following the completion of the cimem project, the Filinta Methodology and BİZ continue through the clothing of Aslı Filinta, the collective brand. The collection includes a one-of-a-kind lace dress covered in blooming flowers, meticulously hand-embroidered by skilled women artisans and reflecting generations of Anatolian craftsmanship and cultural heritage. Made to order, it takes up to three weeks to produce.
There is also a ready-to-wear, long-sleeved artisanal shirt with hand-crocheted details, which supports women in disadvantaged regions. These are “Pieces that carry a whole vanishing world inside them,” as Filinta likes to call them.
They include the eight-cornered Gakkoş caps from Elazığ, once worn only by men and now also made for women by Niyazi Usta, the last remaining craftsman keeping the tradition alive; handwoven Ehram from Erzurum, made entirely from sheep’s wool; Yemeni from Antep, completely natural, hand-stitched leather shoes; beadwork bags from a Sinop prison workshop; linen from Rize; Alaca cloth from Tokat, a multicoloured handwoven fabric made of cotton, linen and silk; and Adana Burması goldwork for women who might otherwise buy foreign jewellery.
Filinta’s designs reanimate these crafts and traditions, allowing old and varied stories to enter modern life. “Our culture reminds us, through these crafts, of our collective memory — and therefore of real meaning,” says Filinta. “Knowing that we cannot move forward while one of us is left behind is, I think, the most important thread of all.”
Yet long before BİZ was born, the pandemic sowed the initial seeds of the collective ideal. Faced with cancelled orders, surplus fabric and halted exports, Filinta and her team began sewing uniforms for healthcare workers in emergency wards that were running short of supplies.
What began with 30 uniforms grew into the production of 20,000, supported by volunteers ranging from housewives with sewing machines at home to members of the Fashion Designers’ Association, large textile firms and retail giants.
“I have witnessed, firsthand, that when you do the right work, the system itself begins to support you. So, we did the only sensible thing: we added Collective Production to our working methodology, learning, as always, by living it,” says Filinta. “We took what we learned, put it in our pocket, and kept walking…into the earthquake region, and beyond.”
The colourful uniforms, each with a small evil-eye bead sewn in, carried no label or brand. They were an act of the heart, much like every piece Filinta designs today.
