destination istanbul; Rifat Ozbek returns to his native Turkey to find rich antique textiles and bright, gaudy belly-dancer costumes.

Byline: Hamish Bowles

The city where Europe meets Asia, Istanbul is a thrilling, sprawling, cosmopolitan place tumbling over its seven hills to the waters of the Bosporus. It is a cultural melting pot where the maverick design spirit of Rifat Ozbek makes perfect sense: Like this city of his birth, Ozbek marries European chic with exoticism. "I find it so interesting the way the young generation mix things up," says Ozbek, 51, "a seventies flare jean with a sporty tank top or a little twenties blouse with an eighties jacket over it. I lived through the 'looks' of the seventies and eighties, and now I think it's really tired. Twenties, fifties, Victoriana-as long as you get the proportions right, it all works together."

Since setting up his design house in London in 1984, Ozbek has been a star. His fans have included the jewelry designer Tina Chow and the princess of Wales. In the late nineties, he took a three-year sabbatical, taking time out to build a romantic house in Bodrum, in southern Turkey. Last year he delighted his faithful by returning to the fashion fold as the designer for the Italian label Pollini. Now, in his mellow, droll way Ozbek (who was "zhoozhing" before Carson Kressley was accessorizing his rompers) slowly unlocks the mysteries of this most secret city, his eye forever drawn to unlikely juxtapositions.

En route to the breathtaking Blue Mosque, with its exquisite Iznik tiles and giant flying-saucer candelabra, Ozbek is assailed by a cherry-juice seller. He is less interested in his operetta-embroidered red bolero than in his footwear: "Love the army galoshes over the Nikes! Such a hot look!" Crossing the Galata Bridge, Ozbek finds the groups of Anatolian peasant women wearing harem pants in sprigged murky cottons and gypsy wraps and jackets over their heads "very John Galliano!" And he is transfixed by the garb of some fishermen: clear plastic skirts over pants.

A brisk walk away from the Hagia Sofia, the legendary first-century Byzantine mosque, is the Grand Bazaar, a medieval village with wide paved walkways and steep labyrinthine lanes, all preserved under boldly painted vaulted ceilings. Ozbek laughs at the virulent colors of the kitsch belly-dancer costumes and Ali Baba turbans at the touristy stands. As a little boy he was taken by his chic mother to see his first movie, Powell and Pressburger's hallucinogenic The Red Shoes. As he swooned for the red-haired ballerina Moira Shearer, flamboyantly dressed by Jacques Fath in emerald-greens and purples, his passion for cinematic fantasy was born. If he has drawn on his Turkish background in his design life, it has been through this oblique lens. "It was always Arabian Nights," he says, "a forties orientalist Hollywood movie inspiration, like Kismet, rather than an ethnic, folkloric-y thing."

He stops to admire the ceramics at Iznik Classics (Ic Bedesten Serifaga Sok No. 18-21; www.iznikclassics.com), made according to original seventeenth-

century designs. Ozbek likes their "Bloomsbury feeling" and has used the motifs before, mixing them with Damien Hirst-inspired prints. At Abdulla (Halicilar Cad. No. 53; www.abdulla.com; 011/90-212-522-9078), with its chic homespun towels and soaps, he is taken with the fringed curtains of giant mismatched glass beads in brilliant colors; they remind him of Tina Chow's bold crystal jewels and Saint ...