To step into 33-year-old designer Dilara Findikoglu's home is to enter her world entirely. The Victorian terrace home has been hers for just over a year but its lavish interiors would have you believe otherwise. Antiques abound and relics fill every corner of the space, from the 18th-century tape measure housed in a golden carriage found on her mantelpiece to an original Playboy-bunny costume hanging on display. Findikoglu’s ideal aesthetic for her home, she says, sits somewhere between a Marina Abramović exhibition and the Fortuny Museum in Venice.
It’s hard not to be inspired by Findikoglu’s interior approach. She never settles and is willing to make do until she can find the right piece for the space, even if it’s not the most practical solution.‘I didn’t have a sofa for a while because I didn’t like the ones I could afford. So I only had chairs, but it looked more beautiful than having an ugly sofa in the room,’ she says. The same approach means that white walls are scarcely to be found. Instead, lengths of taffeta trail from the ceiling. Meanwhile, the walls are decorated with art and objects – each of which comes with a story. ‘I love clusters of things,’ she notes, perhaps speaking of the old newspaper cuttings that sit on a coffee table in her living room or the hundreds of candles filling every unoccupied surface.
Findikoglu starts her days in the house’s most minimalist room, her bedroom, its walls painted a cornflower blue. It contains only a Victorian bed flanked by two 18th-century chairs that are too delicate to sit on, with a baroque lamp on the floor as the only light source. This setup, she says, allows her to ‘wake up like a princess’. ‘I always think queens have a lot of stuff to do, which probably means they wake up feeling stressed about running a country, but princesses don’t really need to worry about much at all. So, I like to wake up like one,’ she laughs.
As is often the case with London’s competitive rental market, it took Findikoglu almost a year to find the right house. The wait was worth it. From her home, located just off the green expanse of London Fields in Hackney, it’s a short walk through the park to her studio, during which she will make a pit stop on Broadway Market for a black Americano. ‘I can walk to work in eight minutes if I’m wearing flats; it takes a little bit longer if I’m wearing heels.’When a day at the studio is done, she’s grateful again for the short commute so she can ‘run home, change and go out,’ or quickly get back to her now-in-place Ateljee sofa by Yrjö Kukkapuro, where she loves to zone out by watching history videos on YouTube.
Since she moved from Istanbul to London to study at Central Saint Martins 14 years ago, this corner of East London has been where Findikoglu has called home, and she is content to be amid its creative bustle. ‘I don’t want a calm life yet,’ she says. ‘I like to be surrounded by lots of people and things happening.’
Manifestations of the aesthetic that has made Findikoglu one of London’s most exciting designers are in evidence through-out her home. ‘The house definitely reflects my work. You can see it in the snakes hanging from my kitchen wall or the ribbons hanging over all the frames. The things I put in my house inspire me to create the clothes I create, so there’s always a connection.’ It works both ways, too. Consider the row of knives mounted on the the wall of her living room under four framed pages of Brian Duffy and Allen Jones’ provocative 1973 Pirelli calendar. ‘Leftovers from the knife dress,’ she explains, speaking of the viral piece, Joan’s Knives, she showed at her autumn/winter2023 show and which has since been worn by Emma Corrin and later by Hari Nef at a Barbie premiere.
Speaking of the world’s most famous fashion doll, it’s Barbie with whom Findikoglu shares her home today: dozens of the figurines appear throughout the rooms. They are among her most prized possessions and bring a playful, innocent charm to the gothic decor. ‘I love them all so much,’ she says, unable to pick a favourite. It’s no surprise then that Margot Robbie wearing a Dilara Findikoglu look to the London premiere of Barbie counts as one of Findikoglu’s career highlights. ‘I was really proud of myself [when that happened],’ she admits bashfully. ‘It reminded me that I’ve followed my childhood dream to be in this position, doing what I have dreamt of since I was four years old.’
Findikoglu’s house is inevitably filled with her own creations, which are displayed like artefacts. The dress she wore to theFashion Awards, a blood-red feathered gown, has been left hanging in the saccharine-pink hallway, ‘because it looked nice against the wall’.
As anyone who lives in a city will understand, storage is an issue and, although she’s fortunate to be the sole occupant of a two-bedroom, two-storey home, Findikoglu would still be glad to have a little more space for her clothes. ‘I have so many, not just the ones that I design, but I collect antique garments, too,’she says. To house them, the second bedroom, which looks out over the back garden, is now a full dressing room, complete with a table covered in accessories of the type you might find on a photoshoot. On it, jewellery, brooches and headpieces are laid out for the taking.
‘I don’t really do anything extra to look after the clothes, but I try not to throw them around,’ she says. ‘If I’m wearing Victorian pieces, I don’t repair them. I think there’s beauty in things when they’re a little destroyed.’ That said, pieces by her design heroes are treated with greater care. ‘I also buy a lot from those who I admire, like Alaïa or Mugler from the Nineties, andI look after them. It’s important for me to keep that legacy and spirit alive,’ she adds.
Findikoglu made global headlines last year when she pulled her London Fashion Week show just before its scheduled date, citing financial reasons. But she says she’s looking forward to showing again, an exercise that she feels reflects her approach to interiors, because both are about world-building. ‘I love doing shows and I love making collections; it’s about the experience, and the feeling that I leave with people,’ she says. But her forth-coming show isn’t the only way in which Findikoglu hopes to draw people into her world. ‘I really want to start poetry nights in my home soon,’ she reveals. While her aesthetic may be entirely her own, a showcase for her own tastes, it’s also a world to which others are warmly welcomed.
This article appears in the 2024 March issue of ELLE UK.
