ISTANBUL — One thing Princess Michael of Kent, who says she is the only Roman Catholic member of the British Royal Family, would not do on her visit to Turkey last month was “bother the pope.”
“I’m not going to bother him. He’s far too busy here,” she joked, speaking of Pope Benedict XVI’s highly charged first visit to a Muslim country, which coincided with her own trip in late November to show off the fall collection of her friend, Turkish designer Atil Kutoglu, at the luxury Beymen department store. “I’ll see the pope in Rome.”
Wearing a black silk tunic with a pink and mauve paisley print and flower details — which almost matched the Atil Kutoglu display in the Beymen window — Princess Michael led a tour through Kutoglu’s fall collection of silk and chiffon dresses and honey-colored coat-jackets with Ottoman-inspired oversize flower motifs.
The princess — who met Kutoglu about seven years ago through friends in Vienna, where he lives — said both she and her daughter, Lady Gabriella Windsor, have become firm fans of his designs.
“He jumps the generations, which is incredibly important,” the princess enthused. “If you can do both it is very clever.”
The princess said she swore by simple, restrained clothes but that Kutoglu had been educating her to wear color and pattern. And there is certainly plenty of that in the Vienna-based designer’s collections. Showing in New York and with a self-professed ambition to become a global lifestyle brand like Calvin Klein and Ralph Lauren, Kutoglu melds Western functionality with the spirit of the East and fields collections inspired by Ottoman caftans, Byzantium and exotic Turkish resort styles.
He has a growing base of blue-blooded clients, and the princess is particularly loyal. The pair are discussing plans for a charity show in London.
So her name was first on the list when Beymen, the currently expanding mecca for Turks and tourists seeking designer wear, wanted to mount an event to promote Kutoglu’s latest collection in its two-year-old, seven-story flagship in the fashionable Istanbul district of Nisantasi.
The princess said she visits Turkey at least once a year, usually staying with her friend Cigdem Simavi, wife of media scion Haldun Simavi. Her daughter recently spent two-and-a-half months here and attended the Mevlana Sufi festival in the city of Konya.