culture clash

Writer Dilvin Yasa spent the better part of three decades dressing to disguise her Turkish heritage, before discovering chandelier earrings weren’t her natural-born enemy

How one writer learned to embrace her heritage (and look-at-me excess).

If you and I were speaking in a therapist’s office, I would tell you it’s the clatter of gold bangles I remember most vividly from my childhood. That, and the sight of long red nails at the ends of ring-adorned fingers reaching to pull me in for the rough kind of hug only achieved by smushing a child’s face into a sequinned dress teamed with Mr T-grade chains. Admittedly, it was the ’80s – hardly what you’d call an era of understated elegance – but as I watched those exotic peacocks bustle around our living room, all smoke-rimmed eyes and air-bag-cushion shoulder pads, it was clear my family’s wardrobe could rival that of the cast of Dynasty. I couldn’t wait to grow up so that one day I could be glamorous, just like them.

By the mid-’90s, my view had changed – right around the time everyone started dressing like they were fronting a Seattle garage band, or a Calvin Klein campaign. Everyone, that is, except for my family who continued to labour under the well-known ethnic fashion edict of “more is more”. With chandelier earrings and Versace knock-offs firmly in place, they just couldn’t understand the fuss over the new queen of cool, Carolyn Bessette, who would go on to marry John F Kennedy Jr. (“Boring!” they shouted, when they saw her simple bias-cut wedding dress. “And to think they have all that money…”)

I got it. I knew that with my olive skin, dark hair and strong features I wasn’t going to be mistaken for a WASP anytime soon. I also lived in fear that I was just one garish garment away from looking like an extra out of Acropolis Now. When a boy at school pointed at my plat-formed leather loafers one day and announced to everyone I was “wearing wogs”, I reacted violently (I’m fairly certain he still has a patch of hair missing). But then I came up with a strategy; from that day on, I was going to dress “Australian”.

Now, there are few things less attractive than wearing every single piece of costume jewellery you own to the beach (props to my aunts), but wearing nothing but neon surf clothes must surely be one of them. That day (after release from detention), I forced my mother to the nearest shopping centre and bought up big on Hot Tuna and Quiksilver everything in the hope the lurid colours might absorb some of my ethnicity. If it sounds ridiculous, it looked even worse. Not only did I not live anywhere near a body of water (I had a creek, at best), I felt so unattractive and uncomfortable in the clothes that my shoulders hunched reactively. I more or less lived out the rest of the decade looking like a junkie who’d raided a beachside charity bin.

Things began to change – both on a global scale and for me personally – in the early noughties when Jennifer Lopez and Penélope Cruz hit the big time and “exotic” became a buzz word in its own right rather than just a polite euphemism. I’d long given up the surf gear, but the rollcall of items I refused to wear because they seemed too ethnic remained long. On the list: anything animal-print or tribal, scarves of any description, dark nail polish, heavy makeup and, as I was still suffering from gold-related PTSD, any kind of gold jewellery. There were whole seasons I would have to avoid shopping because everything on-trend was tiger stripes or harem pants.

But, 10 years on, the time has come to own it. At 37, the fashion stars have finally aligned for me as the normcore movement, characterised by shapeless, downplayed pieces (nope, not even I could have gone there), has been replaced on the spring-summer runways by the kind of serious displays of ’80s-inspired excess my family would be proud of.

Multi-layered embellishment, tiered ruffles, trophy jewellery and blazer shoulders so big you have to turn sideways to enter a room worked their way into collections from Burberry to Balmain. Admittedly, Gucci’s Dalí-esque pieces are still out of my league, and I almost had a seizure when I saw the ornate sequinned dresses at Rochas (a disco version of my aunts’ Ottoman rugs), but I’m relaxing enough into my own skin now to look at the Altuzarra pants suit with exquisite beading, or any of the slinky gowns by Anthony Vaccarello (particularly the metallic red), and think, “Where can I hock my kidneys to get my hands on those?”

The simple truth is, nothing is going to change who I am, no matter what I wear. The difference is that now I can own it. And while I’d love to tell you I’ve run straight out and bought a sequinned jumpsuit to celebrate my ethnicity, making peace with letting go is still a work in progress. Baby steps. My gateway drug? Accessories. As I write this, my hands are a flurry of red-wine fingernails and my gold earrings glint as I yell at the screen – and this is just at home.

I will always have self-imposed fashion limitations – blondes from Bondi might be able to rock a headscarf-and-sunnies combo and come out looking like Grace Kelly, but I’m more likely to be stopped by the Feds. And those harem pants? Cute on others, but they make me look like an actual Sherpa who got off the wrong train. That said, I’m excited about my fashion future because I’ve finally realised I’m not a “wog”, or even a magpie; I’m just a girl who likes the swish of a chandelier earring. My family couldn’t be prouder.

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