209UM
IT
W
EA
RS
SU
IT,
UM
IT
BE
NA
N^
B+
do receive an invitation, it’s not for a home-cooked supper.
Benan doesn’t have a kitchen. “Well, not a kitchen I can
actually cook in, just a little corner. This is Milan – even if
I had five kitchens, I would still like to go out to my favourite
places,” he laughs.
His favourite haunt – by far – is his home. It is here that,
after years of punishing schedules, Benan has found peace.
He stays up every night smoking his cigars, watching TV
and sketching the collections for his new brand B+, which
launches with Matchesfashion.com this month and for which
he ticked off a lifelong dream and enlisted Watson to shoot
the lookbook. “It was an incredible experience... I will always
be a 13-year-old boy around Albert.”
Bedtime can be anywhere between 3.30 and 5am. “I don’t
feel alone when the world is awake – I intensely absorb other
people’s energy – and so at night, when everybody goes to
bed, I don’t have any of these distractions. Strangely, I feel
like I own the world, it’s my world and I can concentrate.”
It’s fitting, given that he comes alive at night in a heady
plume, that one of his favourite plants in the courtyard is a
flowering tobacco. The plant is famed for emitting its sweet
jasmine scent only after sundown and, according to Benan,
it went wild here last summer. Like its proprietor, it appears
to have found fertile ground. nLIVING“In Istanbul, I
grew up seeing
blonde women in
sexy dresses next
to women in
burkas. I’m used
to seeing two
things existing
side by side”Silk throws from
Istanbul’s Grand
Bazaar are draped over
Fornasetti and Gio
Ponti chairs, while
photographs by Albert
Watson, Slim Aarons
and Ara Güler, and a
Lola Montes Schnabel
portrait of Benan
supply the backdrop.
Below: the chair was a
present from a friend.
Below left: a ping-pong
table – the designer
played competitively as
a child – stands at the
bottom of the stairs
to his bedroom03-20-FOB-Interiors_1726460.indd 209 14/01/2020 12:06