Introduction
Dilara Findikoglu is a Turkish fashion designer born in Istanbul on 5 September 1990. Raised in Istanbul in a conservative household, with family roots in Kayseri, she became interested as a teenager in heavy metal, tattoos, occult imagery and the dramatic fashion worlds of designers including John Galliano. At nineteen she moved to London to study fashion at Central Saint Martins, supplementing her education with industry experience that included Maison Margiela under Galliano as well as work around Mary Katrantzou, Jeremy Scott and Yazbukey.
Findikoglu graduated from Central Saint Martins in 2015. After her graduate collection was omitted from the school’s official press show, she organised the #encoreCSM guerrilla presentation for students who had not been selected and showed her own collection, Shamash. She launched her eponymous label in London in 2016, developed the early studio with support from the Sarabande Foundation and reached the LVMH Prize semi-final in 2017. The first years established a practice in which fashion, performance, historical dress and explicitly feminist image-making were treated as one field.
The label developed through increasingly elaborate London presentations before the pandemic interrupted its physical runway rhythm. Findikoglu returned with Spring/Summer 2023 and subsequently navigated the financial strain of independent show production, cancelling the planned Spring/Summer 2024 runway before returning with Femme Vortex in February 2024. Collaborations with Heaven by Marc Jacobs, Boux Avenue and Khy followed, and in 2025 she received the British Fashion Council’s Vanguard Award. She remains founder, designer and sole active director of Dilara Findikoglu Limited, while the brand has expanded its ready-to-wear, direct-to-consumer and wholesale business and introduced its first handbag, Hysteria.
Design ethos
Findikoglu’s work begins with the body as a political and historical site. Corsetry, boning, lingerie, pinstripe tailoring and restrictive period silhouettes recur because they already carry ideas about discipline, modesty and authority. She reworks those structures into exposed, armoured or deliberately unstable forms: a business suit may be pulled into a corset, a pannier rebuilt in human hair, or a dress surfaced with hard metal so that seduction and threat occupy the same garment.
Historical dress is joined to subcultural material without being reduced to costume. Victorian and Tudor references sit beside heavy metal, punk, fetishwear, tattoos, witchcraft and the visual intensity of horror cinema; red functions repeatedly as a charged colour of blood, fire and defiance. The work also draws on Findikoglu’s movement between Istanbul and London. Turkish craft and material references enter alongside British tailoring and institutional dress, while collection settings—churches, historic houses, industrial clubs and decaying interiors—extend the clothes into environments built around power, belief and transgression.
Construction and surface remain central to that theatrical image. The label has used vintage textiles, deadstock, upcycling, natural dyes, hand embroidery and specialist collaborators, including recurring footwear work with Roker and leather development with Whitaker Malem. Findikoglu’s recent collections retain singular couture-like pieces while giving more space to denim, tailoring, knitwear, accessories and commercially repeatable ready-to-wear. The tension between labour-intensive object making and a viable independent wardrobe has become part of the practice itself, without flattening its silhouettes or political charge.
Disclaimer
Career history
2026
Hysteria, first shown with the Spring/Summer 2026 collection, entered retail in 2026 as Dilara Findikoglu’s first handbag. Its launch established bags as a new category inside the main label without creating a separate accessories or handbag division.
2025
On 1 December 2025, Dilara Findikoglu received the Vanguard Award at The Fashion Awards from the British Fashion Council. The award formalised the label’s standing within the contemporary British fashion system after its post-2023 return and commercial expansion.
2025
Khy x Dilara Findikoglu was released on 28 May 2025. The project translated Findikoglu’s corsetry and fitted silhouette language for Khy’s larger direct-to-consumer audience and continued the label’s post-2023 use of commercial collaborations alongside the mainline.
2025
Dilara Findikoglu collaborated with Boux Avenue on a lingerie project launched on 29 January 2025. The capsule translated the label’s long-standing corsetry and underwear codes into a lower-priced retail context without creating a permanent lingerie division.
2024
Dilara Findikoglu x Heaven by Marc Jacobs was released on 31 July 2024. The collaboration extended Findikoglu’s corsetry, distressed surfaces and dark romantic styling into Marc Jacobs’s youth-focused Heaven platform and formed part of the commercial work supporting the independent studio after the SS24 show cancellation.
2023
In September 2023, Dilara Findikoglu cancelled the planned Spring/Summer 2024 runway because the independent business could not fund another show while managing costs from earlier productions. The label remained active, making this a financially driven calendar cancellation rather than a closure or completed SS24 collection.
2021
Saint Dilara Beach Club appeared in 2021 as a named swimwear and digital project and remained visible in later swimwear activity in 2022. It broadened the label’s product vocabulary during the physical-runway hiatus but did not develop into a separately structured division.
2020
After the Autumn/Winter 2020 runway, Dilara Findikoglu entered a prolonged absence from physical mainline shows during the pandemic and the designer’s extended visa-related stay in Turkey. The label remained active through e-commerce, smaller projects and product activity, so the interval is a runway hiatus rather than brand dormancy.
2020
During the first 2020 lockdown, Dilara Findikoglu paired its direct-to-consumer e-commerce launch with a domestic Instagram presentation featuring Honey Rose Heaven. The activation translated the label’s theatrical styling into a remote format at a moment when physical events and occasion dressing had abruptly contracted.
2018
From 2018, London footwear atelier Roker became a recurring specialist collaborator on Dilara Findikoglu runway shoes and boots. The partnership supported the extreme proportions and historical references of the clothing across multiple seasons, including AW18, SS19 and SS20.
2017
In March 2017, Dilara Findikoglu was named among the LVMH Prize semi-finalists for young fashion designers. The selection provided early institutional recognition for a label that had emerged from an independent graduate-show intervention only two years earlier.
2017
In 2017, Findikoglu collaborated with independent publisher Ditto on Dilara: Warrior Sorceress, with writing by Amy Tipper-Hale and illustration by Benjamin Filby. The comic translated the label’s feminist, political and occult imagery into a discrete publishing project without establishing a permanent publishing line.
2016
Findikoglu developed the early label with studio support from the Sarabande Foundation during its formative 2016–17 period. The residency gave the young practice space and institutional support while its labour-intensive corsetry, tailoring and embroidery systems were being established.
2016
Dilara Findikoglu has remained the label’s principal designer since its 2016 launch, directing the clothing, runway image and wider creative practice. Current corporate records also identify her as the company’s sole active director and controlling person with significant control.
2016
Dilara Findikoglu established her eponymous fashion label in London in 2016. The creative foundation predates the 2019 incorporation of Dilara Findikoglu Limited and is the brand’s institutional starting point.
2015
In June 2015, Dilara Findikoglu participated in the independently organised #encoreCSM graduate show after her collection was not selected for Central Saint Martins’ official press runway. The event preceded the foundation of her label but became the public starting point of her independent career.
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