This season LES BENJAMINS’ pays homage to the guest workers that rebuilt Germany after the war – one of whom being the grandfather of the brand’s creative director, Bunyamin Aydin. “He was a welder and one of Turkey’s first guest workers. His taking the courage to leave his small village in east Anatolia, where they had almost no literacy rate, still serves as a major inspiration to me.”
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With many guest workers supposed to leave the country after two years, but with the majority staying for good, the collection explores the duality and multiplicity of integration and de-integration. Split into two stories: leaving Anatolia, which expresses the art of the long goodbye at the train station, where guest workers and their families would wear their most refined tailoring. And living in Germany draws on the duplicity between the utilitarian workwear that helped guest workers assimilate to their new host countries, and the nostalgic elements of ‘home’ that they held sacred once they finished the work day.
