Les Benjamins and Apple stage a spellbinding launch in Cappadocia

Les Benjamins presented its 15th-anniversary “From Earth to Sky” collection in Cappadocia’s Gül Vadisi (Rose Valley). From Barış Manço to the Silk Road, a sweep of cultural references, three neon balloons and a show filmed on iPhone created a new story between Anatolia’s past and its future.

There is more than one way to tell the world about a place. Sometimes it is a song, sometimes a fabric, and sometimes three coloured balloons rising into the sky at sunrise. In “From Earth to Sky”, the collection unveiled for the brand’s 15th year, Bünyamin Aydın, founder of Les Benjamins, brings all of these narratives together. Cappadocia’s geological memory, Anatolia’s cultural heritage and a contemporary design language meet in a show brought to life in collaboration with Apple.

Held in Gül Vadisi at first light, the launch was not simply the presentation of a new collection; it was a reinterpretation of a local cultural heritage through contemporary fashion. On one side, rock formations millions of years old; on the other, neon pink, yellow and green balloons. This time, the distance between past and future closes on a runway.

Before sunrise

Long before the sun reached Cappadocia, Gül Vadisi was already awake. As the crews carried on with their preparations, the models were putting on their final touches, and three giant balloons prepared to rise above the valley’s distinctive rock formations. When the neon green, yellow and pink shapes met the region’s pastel tones, the result was a landscape that looked almost like another planet.

At the show, staged across three separate runways, the collection’s colours took on a different character as the light changed. In this story, Cappadocia was not just a striking landscape; it was the collection’s starting point, the source of its colour palette and the narrative itself.

The idea, which began with Bünyamin Aydın’s trip to Cappadocia at the start of 2026, gives new meaning to the brand’s 15-year journey that began in Istanbul. The region’s natural texture turns from a landscape lodged in the designer’s memory into a language that runs through the entire collection.

From Barış Manço to the Silk Road

The collection’s opening look pays tribute to Barış Manço, who holds a unique place in Türkiye’s cultural memory. Completed with a kaftan and a tree branch representing Anatolia, the look is not merely a nod to the past; it is a starting point for how local culture might be reread within a contemporary narrative.

In this context, Barış Manço’s music, his style of dress and the connections he built between cultures make a meaningful reference. Bringing Anatolian motifs, traditional clothing and musical influences from different places together in his own world, the artist showed years ago that the local can build a universal language. Les Benjamins’ approach pursues a similar question: Is it possible to build a contemporary, international design language while preserving cultural roots?

“From Earth to Sky” looks for its answer in a selection that stretches from the Silk Road to the rock’n’roll aesthetic of the 1970s. Turkish fabrics, contemporary silhouettes and influences carried from different places come together in the same collection. Born in Germany and describing himself in the words “German discipline, Turkish heart”, Aydın treats his own cultural background less as design material than as the foundation of the relationship he has built between two worlds.

The canvas is Western, the paint is Eastern

The collection’s colour palette takes its inspiration from three wild flowers found in Cappadocia. Green, pink and yellow form the shared language of the ten looks and the three specially designed balloons. Cream, blue and earth tones, meanwhile, tie these vivid colours to Cappadocia’s natural texture.

In Aydın’s words, “the canvas is Western, the paint is Eastern”. This approach also sums up the collection’s cultural references: reinterpreting Anatolia’s colours, textures and memory with the tools of contemporary design.

Every piece in the collection was designed on iPad Pro and Apple Pencil Pro during Aydın’s trips to Cappadocia. As photographs, fabric references and first sketches came together in Freeform, the design process also moved into the team’s shared workspace.

Designing the three balloons was a separate stage, where digital drawing met the physical world. Dozens of variations created in Procreate were turned into workable forms through the engineering assessments of the team at Pasha Balloons, one of Cappadocia’s ballooning pioneers. And so a design that began as a drawing on a screen became a real object in the Cappadocian sky.

Behind the camera

The launch’s visual world was captured by French director Neels Castillon. Known for his campaigns for Louis Vuitton and Hennessy, and working within Ridley Scott Creative Group, Castillon saw Gül Vadisi, with its shifting light, its vast scale and the ever-moving texture of its nature, as a narrative space in its own right.

The entire show was filmed on iPhone 18 Pro Max. The shoot began before sunrise and took shape around the changing light, while custom-built drones brought the scale of the balloons and the breadth of the valley into the same frame. Footage recorded at a high frame rate brought out the movement of the fabrics and the collection’s vivid colours.

The visual world, which Castillon describes as “psychedelic and dreamlike”, sets up a contrast between Cappadocia’s earth tones and the collection’s saturated colours. The resulting film is more than a record of a fashion presentation: it is a work in which design, place and technology meet in the same narrative.

In the world of machines

In this project, where drawings begun on a tablet rose into the sky after passing through an engineering process, and a show recorded on a phone camera reached an international audience, technology does not overshadow the story. What really matters is which idea the technology is used to make visible.

Cappadocia’s natural formations, Anatolia’s cultural heritage and the cultural openness that Barış Manço represented hold the collection’s different layers together. That is why the story of “From Earth to Sky” is not only about how fashion is made with digital tools. It is also about how a culture can pass its own references on to new generations and other places while keeping them intact.

Aydın’s wish is a simple one: “I hope this project makes the Turkish people proud.”

The three balloons that rose over Gül Vadisi at daybreak leave behind more than a visually memorable show. This relationship between Anatolia’s past and contemporary design finds its echo sometimes in a kaftan, sometimes in a choice of colour, and sometimes in a song remembered again years later. Because the story a place has to tell the world lies not only in its landscapes but also in the meanings it gives to those landscapes.