The BİZ Collective Women’s Cooperative was founded in July 2025 in Antakya — a region profoundly marked by the February 6 earthquake — by seven women committed to sustaining the cultural and social vitality of these lands. Joined by many others over time, it emerged not as a commercial enterprise but as an act of collective recovery: an effort to rebuild through solidarity, shared responsibility, and the agency of women shaping their own futures.
Grounded in Antakya’s deep cultural memory and traditions of making, BİZ transforms women’s labor into visible, sustainable, and equitable economic participation. Its work spans craft production, agricultural initiatives, education and skill development, and collaborative design and distribution. The aim is not only to preserve local knowledge but to activate it — positioning heritage as a living resource capable of supporting contemporary social and economic structures.
Wherever I am, my work remains connected to Anatolia — to the relationship between cultural memory, contemporary design, and collective creation. When the earthquake occurred, I was outside Türkiye. My first impulse was to travel immediately to Antakya; instead, I was reminded that creativity itself can function as service. A message I shared publicly marked the beginning of what would become BİZ: black symbolizing shared mourning, red reflecting collective responsibility.
An invitation from L’Oréal Skin Ceuticals soon allowed intention to translate into action. Through fieldwork in the region, I encountered and helped reactivate the nearly forgotten practice of Cimem weaving. The production of 10,000 bags resulted in the upcycling of agricultural byproducts, employment opportunities for hundreds of women, and training pathways for younger participants. More significantly, the process generated a network of trust and collaboration that later formed the basis of the cooperative itself.
This experience affirmed a perspective that guides my practice: production cannot be understood solely in economic terms. It is also a means of restoration, continuity, and collective care. Cultural heritage survives not through preservation alone but through use, reinterpretation, and participation. Sustainability similarly extends beyond material considerations, requiring attention to relationships between land, community, knowledge, and time. Within this framework, collective production becomes an ethical and structural choice rather than simply an operational one.
My methodology engages fashion as an active participant within ecological and social systems rather than as a passive output shaped by consumption cycles. It evolves through an ongoing inquiry that asks:
– How might fashion be restructured — through systemic and reverse-oriented thinking — to shift from generating harm toward producing shared positive outcomes?
– In what ways can design reposition fashion as a contributive force sustaining ecological, economic, and social life?
– How might collective benefit provide a pathway for addressing extractive industry structures and consumption-driven cultural patterns?
– What responsibilities and agency does the designer hold when shaping collaborative, value-distributing production models?
– How can Anatolian cultural knowledge and making traditions act as catalysts for regenerative design systems?
As my practice increasingly centered collective outcomes rather than individual authorship, unexpected transformations followed: expanded capacity, greater transparency, and recognition emerging organically from alignment between intention and process. This shift demonstrated how collaborative value creation can reshape creative ecosystems and institutional engagement alike.
Today, BİZ continues with seven founders and fifty-five volunteer women entrepreneurs, cultivating a system in which value circulates across people, land, tradition, and future generations. It represents a living structure where creativity operates as connective infrastructure — linking cultural continuity with socio-economic resilience.
The inspiration of Anatolia awakens a sense of conscience carried within collective memory, reminding us of meaning and responsibility. We believe that the expansion of collective awareness — and its capacity to influence global practice — may grow from these lands. With this awareness, we continue forward, stewarding what has been entrusted to us and inviting others to participate in shaping pathways grounded in collaboration, reciprocity, and shared purpose.
