Sultans, pashas and odalisques. Tulips, astrakhan hats, caftans and polychromes. Carpets that are woven gardens, sweets made with roses and porcelain filled with flowers. Hammams, villas on the edge of the Bosphorus and palaces that keep precious stones. The dazzling historical, cultural and artistic heritage of today’s Turkey represents a gigantic cabinet of curiosities that has been condensed into a book: Golden Opulence, from the Assouline publishing house, with texts by Laurence Benaïm.
The volume is sumptuous like its title. Celebrate 500 years of Ottoman luxury history, from the height of the empire in 1520 under Suleiman the Magnificent to today, and analyze its impact on the West.
It is an initiative of the Turkish firm Beymen, owner of a chain of luxury department stores, to mark its fiftieth anniversary. It is complemented by an exhibition at the Tophane-i Amire art center in Istanbul, for which fifty fashion, jewelry and footwear designers have been invited to create a unique piece, inspired by the Ottoman legacy. Among others, brands such as Valentino, Alexander McQueen, Victoria Beckham and Balmain have participated.
The abundance of colors, materials and shapes in the pages of Golden Opulence explains the fascination that Europeans felt with the descriptions of exotic Asia Minor and its capital, Istanbul; the only metropolis in the world between two continents. Beginning in the 16th century, the stories, objects and images brought by ambassadors and merchants sparked a fashion known as turquerie: the tendency to imitate aspects of the lifestyle of the elites of the Ottoman Empire. This comprised a gigantic territory, which at its peak included, in addition to Anatolia, a large part of the Balkans, North Africa and the Middle East.
This European fascination would begin with tulips, the favorite flower of the sultans, which in Holland caused a commercial fever considered the first speculative bubble in history. Later, the Turkish Letters were published, by the English aristocrat Lady Mary Montagu, whose husband was appointed ambassador to Constantinople in 1716. The society of the time wanted to know more about those “rooms covered with Persian carpets,” with divans “upholstered in silks.” scarlet, with golden fringes.” About the palace seraglio and the incredible jewels of the sultanas, which Lady Mary described in great detail.
In 1747, the famous Madame de Pompadour had her portrait disguised as a Turkish princess, attended by a slave. In 1777, Empress Marie Antoinette had her Turkish boudoir designed for Fontainebleau Castle. It was a private room, filled with tapestries, rugs and oriental motifs, such as crescent moons acting as curtain raisers. The boudoir, destroyed during the Revolution, was restored by Empress Josephine, Napoleon’s wife, who also spared no expense to decorate it with the best silks, furniture and details of oriental inspiration.
In some ways, this Western passion for Ottoman opulence has not ceased. And this book is an example of this, as well as proof of the long history of the taste for luxury. “Although it may seem like a recent concept, the history of luxury is as old as the history of humanity,” writes businessman Rachid Mohamed Rachid, one of the most prominent figures in the international luxury industry, in the prologue. For the also president of Valentino and Balmain, luxury is a range that includes “fashion, jewelry, interior design, gastronomy, books and ornaments,” as well as a fundamental factor for the development of the decorative arts. and crafts.
All this is reflected in this Ottoman opulence, in its diversity of shapes and sizes: the micro-embroideries in gold thread on the textiles, the large halls of the Topkapi, the small sweets flavored with roses and the exquisite porcelains of Izniz, whose name refers to the city conquered by Alexander the Great. All of them examples of the variety and richness of an enormous legacy, which continues to inspire contemporary luxury.
