Hatice Utkan
No one has ever stopped to question how the word “vintage” has evolved over time after it first entered daily parlance.
Despite no one being aware, it was Sept. 11, that help this trend evolve.
After Sept. 11 the need to turn to the past developed because the past was safe and it was a part of our lives. No harm could come from the past.
It is a fact that the perception of the future is always vague and no one can know what will happen in the future.
That’s why futuresque accessories, garments, architecture and clothes have not been the main preference of many people. Instead of that, everyone needed something from the past, something safe and confident.
After all, the vintage trend grew and it entered to lives of people easily because there can not be harm done with the vintage trend. It brought the feeling of safeness and confidence.
Not only the clothes, but also home accessories turned into vintage trends.
People began to prefer to go to cafes with much more vintage features. Vintage inner architecture was an attraction for everyone, because everyone was fed up with hard boiled realism and the futuresque concerns.
The sense of ungraspable melancholy, which evokes vintage accessories in spaces, began to be the most favorable things in the city.
While many architects and designers noticed this, few of them have been successful in coming up with something new and creative with this “past” trend.
Selçuk Arıkan is among those few people. Arıkan an architect, who owns a small antiques and design shop in Çukurcuma started to create vintage plates for cafes and restaurants.
“Imagine that you have a vintage concept cafe or a restaurant, do you think is it normal to have a futuresque neon lamp plate on the outside?”
That’s why Arıkan started to create new plates.
“There was a demand and I saw it,” he said.
Noting that he is designing wooden and steel plates for every kind of brand or cafe, Arıkan said he was also working with his own calligraphy style.
“Most people want to use designs from the 1930s. Bars, furniture, lamps everything can be in harmony with those years and give the feeling of old times. However, when it come to the reflection of the place from the facade, the choices in the market may not be enough,” he said.
But plastic calligraphy and technological stuff can never give the vintage concept that people would like to reflect, according to Arıkan.
Everything should be in harmony. “If the inner space gives the place an old concept, then the facade should be the same. I am using old calligraphies, worn out features in my plates,” said Arıkan, noting that he was trying to create something with the perception of old and vintage furniture.
Arıkan’s works can be found in his shop in Çukurcuma.
The architect is eager to expand the usage of vintage plates in every kind of space.