On Thursday, 4 September, designer Ülkühan Akgül presented his debut collection Etnisch Profiteren at the Hollandsche Manege during Amsterdam Fashion Week. Within a venue that itself embodies the tension between labour and spectacle, Akgül staged a show that resisted easy beauty in favour of a layered confrontation: who profits when cultural identity becomes currency?
The show opened with weighted LEGO armour over azure-blue tights and SpongeBob-yellow knickers. What at first recalled childhood toys revealed itself as a rigid monument: corporate legitimacy, pixelated and petrified, endured rather than worn.
Across looks, the body was distorted into protest. Spiked foam dresses with exaggerated hips reclaimed space. A leather silhouette, cut into the form of a shovel, became both skin and tool, weaponised by labour. A chest weighed down by medals swelled above bloated trousers, parodying corporate reward systems. A “Diversity Hire” tank was paired with a heavy 3D-printed LEGO pencil skirt, making it impossible for the wearer to perform lightly. A bubble skirt encrusted with tourist-shop pins turned each step into a struggle. Plastered bordeaux shorts, clinging as if still wet, were cinched with a corset back.
Even fashion’s most enduring codes were unsettled. The little black dress appeared in upcycled fake grass. Its elegance mocked itself: an inside job dressed for acceptance, ready to vanish into curated greenery. Bags made of garden stones weighed down arms, and a cardboard crown topped with a blond quiff mocked power and its ornamentation.
Akgül’s debut drew allure and abrasion into the same frame, forcing the audience to sit with discomfort: garments that attracted and repelled, bodies silenced yet screaming, beauty that mocked its own exploitation. It was a debut that refused to flatter, insisting instead on the endurance of weight, labour, and truth. A fuck-you to fashion snobs, a genius endeavour into parodic couture. Akgül might still be green, but he’s already fluent enough in fashion codes to twist them to his hand.
