Yaz Bukey Plays Detective

Accessories designer (and Ottoman princess) Yaz Bukey has been spending time in Istanbul of late. And the city’s landmark nineteenth-century hotel Pera Palace was the starting point for her Fall 2013 Yazbukey collection, which she’s titled “Murder She Wrote.” The designer donned several of her new Plexiglas wares at her party at the Maison Darré last night, including a heart-and-dagger headpiece that grazed the temple of anyone who attempted to kiss her cheek. “My sister lived in Pera Palace years ago, before the renovation,” she recalled. “It was eerie, kind of haunted, and there was a legend about a missing key. Now, it’s a luxury hotel, but I was thinking about the way it used to be, because that’s where Agatha Christie lived while writing Murder on the Orient Express. This collection is an homage to her and to Angela Lansbury, both.”

At the back of the boutique, a living tableau of characters inspired by a Yazbukey take on the board game Clue (caricatures with names like Agatha Fletcher, Poison Yvette, Professor Doremi, and Crazy Scarlett) camped it up around a Plexiglas piano keyboard. Equally notable as the theatric display were Bukey’s figurative necklaces, plastrons, and handmade handbags inlaid with images of lipstick, pearls, eyeglasses, or—the designer’s personal favorite—a handful of detective novels. Burning on a side table was Bukey’s recent collaboration with Cire Trudon—a candle she said was inspired by a fifties pinup on the back of her boyfriend’s motorcycle. Its scent? “Hair spray, lipstick, and leather.”