«Fashion on Bookshelves »is a blog founded in June 2013 from an idea of Turkish-born Aslı Özbek, emerging from her immense passion for learning and her love of fashion and costume.
Asli started buying her first fashion books while studying at Florence’s Polimoda Fashion Institute, which introduced her to a brand new world of reading, discovering and researching fashion, one that she never had the possibility to fully experience in her native Istanbul.
During her time working in the fashion industry, Asli progressively cultivated a passion for reading the likes of everything fashion; from a brand’s history to its product development, using her books as trusty tools throughout this learning process.
Seemingly, she always had the desire of starting her own blog, but she never found an idea that embodied what she felt she truly wanted to express, and idea that captured her essence and passions. Until 2013, that is.
By asking herself what her number one passion was, after years of working in fashion, and how she wanted to grow and communicate being true to herself, she understood that what mattered the most to her was having a rich fashion culture and the possibility to archive everything she read. This desire consequently branched out from her mind onto a digital platform aimed to raise awareness not only on certain ways of living and dressing, but on how to truly enrich one’s culture through reading. The name “Fashion on Bookshelves” literally stems from fashion being on Asli’s bookshelves. One of the main aims of the blog, in fact, is to defeat the notion that fashion books are just for coffee tables; they are meant to be read, understood and interpreted.
Fashion Books Are Not For Coffee Tables
Fashion on Bookshelves presents an ever-growing list of personally selected books that are really able to communicate something meaningful, inspirational, enriching. That is, not just books full of glossy photographs, but with a meaningful cultural value in their contents, one that can also contribute to having a solid fashion education.
Image credit: Deniz Özgün x Vogue Türkiye
The further aim of Fashion on Bookshelves is to encourage others to read more about fashion, one that has been so far met by inspiring people through photos of fashion icons reading.
Fashion on Bookshelves has the precise aim of highlighting fashion’s cultural and academic aspects, making these familiar and accessible to everyone. This is also done by sharing extracts, to give people a taste of what they will be able to read throughout the selected book.
Fashion gives us a choice on how to present ourselves to the world. Storytelling is what makes us human, curious, alive; it brings us together and is the heart and core of all communication. Books, for centuries companions of our education, come alive and are treasured on this innovative digital platform entirely devoted to fashion.