Designer european fashion

Ever since he began, Rifat Ozbek has followed the call of his own voice as a designer. He's an independent, an inventor, and an inveterate puncturer of pomposity. Here's an in-depth look into his world

RIP-ROARING RIFAT

One of Rifat Ozbek's best friends happens to be writer and actor Rupert Everett, who helps light up movie screens this month in My Best Friend's Wedding. We thought they were the perfect marriage for an interview. Here they prove that in their star-spangled scene of style and cinema, nothing is sacred but everything is precious

For more years than we can remember, Rifat Ozbek and I have spoken on the phone twice a week, our point in common being that we are both "hoorays" who have chosen to live in the queer world of show folk and fashion victims. A hooray is born in a castle, brought up by a nanny, and sent away to boarding school. Some hoorays substitute the dry-out clinic for university and the glitterball-lit allure of the rave for the stock exchange, but all are totally unfazed by disaster. Surrounded from birth by Rembrandts and ormolu vases, a hooray will stub out endless cigarettes on the carpet if the ash-tray Is beyond the reach of his languid arm.

Rifat is a Turkish hooray, which is a slightly more exotic animal than his English counterpart, and Rifat is as grand as they come - although he has been known to enter a room chanting "Trash coming through" and abruptly end phone conversations with "Bored now, bye." We talked on the phone on St. Patrick's Day.

RUPERT EVERETT: Hi!

RIFAT OZBEK: Risk! [laughs]

RE: So first of all, Rifat, as far as I can gather, you were born in Istanbul, on the European side of the Bosporus where the sun goes down at about two-thirty in the afternoon leaving a very chilly and flu-promoting shade.

RO: Have you been talking to Omer? [Omer Koc, a close friend of Ozbek's]

RE: As a matter of fact I have. He was very Illuminating. So, you had a German nanny.

RO: Yes.

RE: And was she your first sexual experience?

RO: [ruffled] My German nanny?

RE: Hmm?

RO: Actually, yes. How did you know that?

RE: I can't reveal my sources, Rifat. [laughs] That must have put you off women for life.

RO: Exactly. [both laugh]

RE: And were there braziers in the middle of your nursery, with perfumed coal burning in them?

RO: No, darling, we had central heating.

RE: I'm going to say that you had braziers anyway. It makes you sound more exotic.

RO: Sounds like a very Cecil B. DeMille version of the Ottoman Empire. [laughs]

RE: In fact, Rifat, initially there were three of you [in the nursery], right?

RO: Yes. But there was an accident: One of my little brothers drowned in the bath. I had the flu and my mother was in the library choosing a book for me to read when it happened.

RE: Can you remember it clearly?

RO: Yes, I remember. I held him in my arms and everything.

RE: That changes something in you forever, an experience like that happening when you're so young, at a time when you don't really understand death.

RO: It was unimaginably horrible. My mother completely changed after that. Before, she used to go out a lot. People in Istanbul partied all the time - dinner parties at home, at other people's - they were all constantly out. And when my father wasn't home -

RE: Out bonking the mistress in a little flat on the Asian side of the Bosporus, probably.

RO: Right. I just met her three months ago.

RE: The mistress?

RO: On my father's deathbed. She was looking after him. Suddenly I discovered he had another life.

RE: Did you know about her when you were growing up?

RO: No, it was done very discreetly.

RE: You were thick-skinned hoorays, in other words.

RO: There was a sheltering, yes. And when my father wasn't home, my mother had these queen companions, people from the theater. One was the Turkish equivalent of Noel Coward. [laughs]

RE: I love the idea of a Turkish Noel Coward. Now, were you allowed down at your parents' dinner parties?

RO: We were allowed to watch from the top of the stairs.

RE: Like the Family Von Trapp Singers.

RO: If they were close friends, then maybe we'd come downstairs to say hi, but then we'd be sent up to bed.

RE: So there you were, the oldest son of one of the leading families of the old Ottowoman Empire - inner parties, butlers, German nannies, swimming parties on the Bosporus, the whole shebang. What happened? How did you stage your big rebellion?

RO: Well, I didn't really rebel until I was seventeen. I bought all these clothes in London, where we used to go for the holidays, and wore them back to Istanbul - platform shoes, earrings, glam rock stuff. My hair was long and I put it all on. My parents were horrified.

RE: Mine too, when I was a hooray punk. It's always the clothes they object to, isn't it?

RO: I know. Then I had this party - the whole of Istanbul was there. . . .

RE: And you came down the stalin looking like the Turkish Earth, Wind & Fire.

RO: Pope! [Ozbek's slang for "yes," as in: "Is the Pope Catholic?"]

RE: Fraulein Maria is watching from the nursery banister, your dad is chatting with your mum, and here she comes - clomp, clomp, clomp - as you totter on your new stacks down the polished marble staircase. There is an audible gasp from the crowd. Your mum - always in black and with pearls, they tell me - shares a worried glance with the Turkish Noel Coward. . . .

RO: [laughs] How did you know?

RE: Trust me, I know. You head straight for the front door, jump into a taxi, and don't come back until four o'clock the next afternoon. This is what they tell me.

RO: Well, I don't know who told you, but it wasn't quite like that.

RE: Don't ever expect the truth from a journalist, Rifat.

RO: The truth is, I had met this older guy, a designer named Cemil [Tpekci], two nights before. I left the party - halfway through, incidentally - to go and meet him. We partied all night and became the best of friends. And that was the end of my -

RE: Childhood.

RO: It was a big scandal.

RE: And were you having a scene with him?

RO: Oh no, not at all. We were sisters.

RE: Was there a gay scene in Istanbul then?

RO: Sort of. There were these low-life bars that had a mixture of everything: gays, transvestites, gangsters, junkies. . .

RE: And you, with your luxuriant Karen Carpenter hairdo. [both laugh]

RO: We're talking twenty years ago, maybe longer

RE: Much longer, darling. We're talking thirty years ago, actually.

RO: Well, hello!

RE: And then you set off for Europe.

RO: Initially I went to Switzerland and places, to learn languages. Then in 1970 I went to Liverpool to study architecture. I was the only student who didn't have horn-rimmed glasses; I had black nails and chiffon scarves. I was there for two years, some of the best years of my life, and then I came down to London to go to the AA.

RE: Wasn't there an AA in Liverpool?

RO: [laughs] The Architectural Association, dear. It was a very liberal school, and they thought my stuff was more their kind of thing. But the course was so long - seven years - and I'd always been really interested in clothes, so I decided to try for St. Martin's [Central St. Martin's School of Art and Design] instead. I was completely unprepared. I went down with six sketches that I had done on the train to London.

RE: Typical you.

RO: Hello! Very last minute. I had a meeting with this great woman, Muriel Pemberton, who was the head of the fashion department at the time. She looked at my sketches and said, "Great, you can start."

RE: It was at this time that you discovered Paris, wasn't it?

RO: Yes, and after I graduated I moved to Paris to get a job. Of course I hardly looked. I used to leave the Club Sept every morning at six o'clock.

RE: Right. That was such a fantastic time in Paris.

RO: Ah, genius, genius. Grace Jones dancing on tables. Karl Lagerfeld. Yves St. Laurent and Loulou de la Falaise. You know, all that crowd.

RE: Grace Jones is still dancing on tables.

RO: It was a fabulous time. Gorgeous guys. And then next door was the Bronx, where you opened the front door and fell into a back room. [both laugh] With a giant video screen! And everyone was . . . you know.

RE: And they had wooden seats on the Paris Metro then, remember?

RO: Don't they have those anymore?

RE: No, Rifat. So In 1980 you went back to London to work at Monsoon in Beauchamp Place, where we met.

RO: Right. You were working at Piero de Monzi.

RE: And then in 1984 you formed your own company.

RO: The first show was in the front room of my parents' flat on Cadogan Square. We showed to ten people at a time with one model, Paula Reed, who would rush back, change, and rush out again. Robert [Forrest, Ozbek's U.S. agent and consultant merchandiser until 1994] was with me right from the start, and he brought in all the buyers and press, so I was very lucky. Cindy [White, Ozbek's communication director] was with us too.

RE: And then came your famous white [New Age] collection in 1990. Was that when people really started talking about your work?