Meet Bute!
“Bute and Yasemin are kind of like the intersection of intertwined circles…” says Yasemin İpek when I ask her about what she and her brand has in common. While differentiating daily wear with unique details; Bute aims to make the pieces in everyone’s closet special.
Yasemin’s adventure of establishing her own brand comes first from her interest in fashion, and then from the time she spent with her father, who is a textile manufacturer. After graduating, Yasemin has found herself thinking about “How would it be if I set up a brand?” and explains this process as follows: “People stumble a lot, make mistakes, believe quickly and sometimes even give up very quickly, but it is a great chance to have the support of someone who knows this industry behind you. Because as a woman, being the boss of your job in any sector in this country is crazy…”
The name of the brand comes from the roots of Yasemin. The fact that Bute is an Albanian word is an indication of Yasemin’s love and respect for her Albanian immigrant grandparents. Bute, which means “calm, soft personality- able to maintain its calmness in the face of situations”, reflects this calm, dignified and timeless character with its designs.
“Seeing how much effort is put into even a single product calms you in your madness. That’s why I’m not positioning my brand as part of this consumption frenzy. The purpose we serve is the opposite of that.”
When I asked what Bute designs promise to its wearers; “Our top priority is to provide our customers with quality products that they can use for years to come. Our goal is not to be a part of the consumption frenzy, on the contrary, to encourage smart shopping. A nice feature of our products is that they can be adjusted for both daily use and special occasions.” Yasemin replies. While she states that her own ideas and tastes come into play during the design phase, the cornerstone of her collections can be formed by an event, color, person or a painting that affected her at that time. All of the embroideries in the collections are actually pieces of sketches that Yasemin drew in her spare time, so we can understand how personal of a brand Bute is for Yasemin.
To establish your own brand, to be on the production side of the business and not the consumption; can change one’s relationship with fashion. This process pushed Yasemin to encounter the invisible part of the iceberg. “My relationship completely changed because I realized how much damage and pollution I had produced to the world. We consume and produce more and more than we need. Humanity does not need that many products, nor does the world have the power to handle this consumption.” says Yasemin. While she explains that seeing the labor for a single product, calms herself in this madness, it is of great importance not to position Bute as a part of this consumption frenzy and to produce slow, thoughtful pieces at the foundation of the brand.