Ýpekçi sips a cup of coffee here every time he comes to the Bazaar. He says he likes it because ‘it reminds people once again of the forgotten Grand Bazaar’. The Bazaar has a special meaning of course for a designer who, throughout the thirty-plus years of his professional career, has always interpreted the Ottoman in his collections, taking his visual language from its synthesis of cultures: ‘This place nourishes me,’ he says. ‘It’s also a place that reminds me over and over again of my entire life... I was only three or four years old the first time I came to the Grand Bazaar. I came here every week with my mother and my two grandmothers. We always bought something, drank tea and then went down to Eminönü.’ A habit going back to his boyhood days... Ipekçi emphasises that he owes his unique outlook and his reputation as an ethnic designer to the culture he acquired in the Grand Bazaar: ‘Exactly fifty-four years ago I started getting to know lots of people and jewellers in the Grand Bazaar, lots of stones and old jewellery too. Ottoman mores and customs surrounded and shaped me. Who knows, maybe that’s why I always feel I’m as solid as the Bazaar itself.’