The fashion designer reimagines herself as a superhero in a new collaboration with Ditto
- TextAnother Man
Turkish designer Dilara Findikoglu is rapidly gaining attention for her dark, punk, opulent and occultic take on fashion. Having staged a few lauded presentations, in September she made her London Fashion Week debut with a show styled by Another Man’s Fashion Director, Ellie Grace Cumming, which featured the likes of tattoo artist Grace Neutral, rapper Brooke Candy and RuPaul’s Drag Race season seven winner Violet Chachki.
Last night, the designer debuted her latest project: a comic book made in collaboration with Ditto, titled Dilara: Warrior Sorceress. Drawn by Benjamin Filby and featuring a story by fantasy writer Amy Tipper-Hale, the book follows Dilara, “a superhero, a warrior queen with magical powers, living in a floating castle in a sea of the skulls of her opponents”. Here, alongside some of Filby’s preparatory sketches, Findikoglu tells us more about the book and how Dilara the superhero relates to herself, Dilara the fashion designer.
“Dilara: Warrior Sorceress is about the heroic fashion designer that I’m trying to be. It’s a comic book where I’m saving the world and doing all the things that I want to do in my head.
The whole story is based on Trump; me trying to kill him. I travel back in time and find Elizabeth I, Cleopatra and people and bring them back to the present. We have a meeting and try and figure out how we’re going to kill him. Then we do it and save the world from discrimination.
Dilara the superhero is a more exaggerated version of myself. I have all the political ideas in my mind; what I think is positive or negative. Every fashion show or collection I do, I try to address a political issue or a human rights issue, and so Dilara the superhero is who I want to be. She does things that I want to do in real life, but can’t.
I like the idea of representing females as superheros because generally comic books are generally based on male power and saving the women. I like the comic books that have female superheroes who look good, are brave and have loads of superpowers. I guess I like the idea of being a strong female character that saves the world and works for the good of humanity.”
Dilara: Warrior Sorceress is published by Ditto. Buy a copy here.
