SHORT CV

Graduated from the Industrial Design Department, Middle East Technical University (1989), Şölen Kipöz gained her master's degree from Dokuz Eylül University Fine Arts Faculty, Textile Department, and PhD from the Communications & Public Relations Department in Aegean University (1998). Her post-doctorate research on Fashion Management took place at Bologna University through a scholarship from the Italian Government. At Dokuz Eylül University, she worked as a research assistant in the Fashion Accessory program and conducted jewelry design projects with the World Gold Council there. Following her academic career in the Izmir Institute of Technology Industrial Design Master Program, in 2001, she was assigned as a founding academic member of the Izmir University of Economics, Fashion and Textile Design Department. There she has delivered many bachelor's, master's, and Ph.D. courses on design and theory. She published trend books on wedding fashions and ready-to-wear in collaboration with the industry. Her conceptual projects had outputs as exhibitions and publications such as the book Dress Against Disaster (2007), which provided a theoretical basis for a design project she supervised and exhibited in the Social Design Biennial in Utrecht.
Her research interests cover conceptual fashion design, interdisciplinary fashion studies, and ethical and sustainable fashion design. The last has outcomes such as artistic presentations and exhibitions through which she challenges the borders between design, art, and crafts. Her personal exhibition Ahimsa: The Other Life of Clothes (2012), her installations and performances for PortIzmir3 International Contemporary Art Triennial (2014) and Asteya (2017), Salvaged Leather ( 2019) exhibition and A Sympoeitic Fashion Practice: Bonds co-created with Witches of the East Collective -which she has co-founded and a member of -for 1st International Turkish Textile Biennial are some of her notable works. Her design project, the rag doll was registered as a utility model by the Turkish Patent Institute in 2015 which can be produced and personalized by the user and has been co-created with women and children. In 2016 she presented this project in the Royal College of Arts, London. The same year, Kipöz edited a collective book, entitled Sustainable Fashion (2015) published in Turkish that has become influential in the path of creating an awareness on slow and ethical fashion in Turkey. She is the author and the editor of the book entitled "Modada Yavaşlık" followed by “Slowness in Fashion” ( 2020) published in the UK .