Les Benjamins (Q7271)
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Les Benjamins is a fashion house from BOF.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Les Benjamins |
Les Benjamins is a fashion house from BOF. |
Statements
2011
founder & creative director
The mostly unisex streetwear brand Les Benajmins specializes in “journeys of discovery,” a strategy that points up the personal story of its creative director and founder, Bunyamin Aydin, who is German of Turkish origin. Presumably this was also the logic behind the brand’s stylized camera logo. Aydin is fond of saying that, as a designer, he likes to “capture moments” and transpose them into clothes: Those 35s you see everywhere are a reference to now-vintage film cameras.This season, Aydin looks eastward to Japan, not just because he’s always been slightly obsessed with that culture, but because the Japanese share his love of basketball. From that algorithm come more of the brand’s best-selling zip hoodies, tech-infused kimonos, 3-D basketball prints with upended lettering, or collages with Tokyo imagery shot by Aydin himself, plus an optical white tracksuit with fluorescent green striping that will probably go viral. The designer nods to his roots with a red-and-black carpet print; camouflage pieces run through with red lacing will also likely prove popular. The “dumplings rather than flowers” slogan is probably one of the more perplexing neologisms of the season, but Les Benjamins fans will likely find it ironic: The brand already has eight stores in China.That’s not the only place Les Benjamins is proving a slam dunk at retail—it now has 120 retail stockists and in September will inaugurate a brand-new flagship in Istanbul. A first collaboration with Puma is on the way, too: A debut wave of Les Benjamins Tsugis and athleisure pieces will bow in 450 Puma stores worldwide next spring.
30 June 2018
TitledAncient Skyscrapers at Night, Bunyamin Aydin’s Pitti Uomo presentation (for which the collection images have only now been delivered) was an edifice of performance and symbolism built on a foundation of carefully elevated and mostly monochromatic streetwear. A star-surrounded moon was projected behind the stage of the Teatro Niccolini, backdrop to two female dancers in pleated gold who twirled dervishly and cast a series of meaningful shapes with their garments. As they stilled in the artificial moonlight, 60 or so models emerged silently from the sidelines and took their places within two green laser-lit pyramid outlines.The clothes were mostly monochromatic because of that “at night” clue in the title, but there were a few flashes of midnight blue velvet in bombers, and insinuations of Lurex starlight shine in scarves and side stripes on track trousers. Aydin had been musing on the Aztec as well as the Egyptian, and incorporated 2- and 3-D equilaterals in graphics overprinted on vintage photographs of last-century skyscrapers, his signature collage prints, and in new three-cornered iterations of his logo. Even the quilting was triangular. Around 20 of the looks were womenswear and included lace-edged skirts with angular sheer panels at the hip, plus many variations of the key minimalist track jacket and track pant uniform, all placed atop its own foundations of Puma’s Tsugi sneakers. “People ask me what is this, and I say it is a hybrid of things, a mix. That is how I see the world,” said Aydin.
11 September 2020
Les Benjamins’s Bunyamin Aydin, in town from Istanbul, seems like a pretty cool guy. Moments before his Spring presentation began, he stood mellowly in his ornately carpeted bohemian set, eyes calm behind lollipop yellow–lensed Cartier glasses. You get the sense that he’s his own customer, which, as far as this writer is concerned, often makes for pretty compelling output.Aydin always tries to bring an international focal point to his streetwear concepts, and this season he focused on Australia and New Zealand. He wanted to combine both aboriginal and British influences. Unfortunately, this area was inevitably going to be dicey, considering the colonialist persecutions by the latter of the former, and the still existent sensitivities toward relations. Tribal-inspired face paint, for example, was unnecessary. As were painted visages on tops. This was too overt, and while unintentional, Aydin could’ve gone in a quieter vein to honor his inspiration—which he did, with some otherwise solidly good clothes.A carpet-like poncho hoodie, which featured interpretations of Aboriginal polka-dot paintings (subtler, more respectful), dynamic leather vests, and a great summery striped series of bajas and shorts all registered.
23 June 2017
Stretching from Turkey to Japan, Asia is perhaps the most diverse continent of them all, and Istanbul-based designer Bunyamin Aydin is embracing that diversity in his streetwear brand Les Benjamins to great effect. This presentation was held in a rickety but beautiful pagoda in Paris and had its power in the breadth of references to cultures that have sometimes been adversaries. Mongolia was the main inspiration this season, hence the embroidered mountain capes on long bombers and the X-ray-eyed eagles framed in studs printed onto mid-thigh zipped-at-the-side sweats, and the nearly diamond quilting on outerwear. But there were Indonesian elements to the brocaded detailing too, plus a signature Ottoman magnificence to some of the prints, plus a Moroccan mien to the starburst zipper tags. Oh, Morocco—that’s Africa, right? Busted. The point here was finding beauty in diaspora and seeing that beauty above its otherness. Les Benjamins may be all about its title, but it has a geopolitical wickedness to revel in: It’s traveling without moving.
23 January 2017
Founder: Bunyamin AydinYear established: 2011Known for: Men's and women's T-shirts and sweatshirts printed with large, humorous images (John Lennon in a fez, for instance)Stocked at: Saks Fifth Avenue, Assembly New York
21 March 2015