PREV: The Radical Subversion of Vegan Fashion

Challenging traditional leather capitals through architectural silhouettes, rigorous material vetting, and street sensibility with Prev Vegan Fashion

Born at the intersection of “Plant” and “Revolution,” Prev refuses to frame conscious design as an earnest moral concession. Spearheaded by co-founders Elif Taştekne and Osman Koçak, the independent label bypasses conventional sustainability tropes, bringing raw street sensibility, satirical illustrations, and rigorous architectural silhouettes directly into the heritage centers of traditional leather craftsmanship.

Insisting that pure aesthetic desire must precede ethical persuasion, the Prev duo transforms agricultural waste into high-grade geometric artifacts like the PETA-awarded KIARA bag while cultivating a devoted following through their cult-favorite planners. Taştekne and Koçak discuss navigating atelier friction, weathering deliberate political boycotts, and mastering the radical discipline of saying no on their road to Paris.

IRK: Prev strips away the overly earnest cliches of vegan fashion in favor of a raw, street-level edge. What drove this rebellious visual identity?

Elif Taştekne & Osman Koçak (Co-Founders of Prev): Part of it came from being tired of what “vegan fashion” was expected to look and sound like. There was so much softness, so much explaining, and often a sense that the ethics had to come before the desire for the product. We never wanted Prev to feel like a good cause you were supposed to support. We wanted people to want the product first, and then discover everything it stands for.

At the core of Prev is activism, but also love and compassion. Rather than treating these values as delicate, we approach them boldly. That naturally shaped a sharper aesthetic, weaving sarcasm and irreverence into how we communicate.

For us, caring deeply and having a strong aesthetic were never opposites. Prev was built around the idea that compassion can have an edge.

IRK: Your graphic scarves and accessories carry a very distinct, collectible energy. How do these lighter pieces interact with the heavier, architectural lines of your plant-based bags and shoes?

Taştekne & Koçak: They feel like two different parts of the same personality. The bags and shoes are more structured, while the scarves give us room to be more instinctive, illustrative and free.

There’s something intentionally sketchy about them too. Almost everything we design starts with sketches, so they carry a little of that early, less polished stage with them. It lets us welcome organic forms, thorns, curious characters, and unfiltered designer imagination into Prev’s world.

We don’t really think of these categories separately. Ideas, symbols and drawings keep moving from one object to another. Sometimes something as architectural as our KIARA bag just needs something a little chaotic tied around its handle.

IRK: Beyond footwear and accessories, your planners have become cult artifacts. How does the slow, tactile rhythm of paper dialogue with the rest of your visual world

Taştekne & Koçak: Paper was never really a side category for us. I am deeply attached to physical things: writing notes, crossing them out, and rediscovering old notebooks years later.

Fashion moves incredibly fast, especially online, and paper does the opposite. You have to sit with it. A planner stays with someone every day for a year. That kind of relationship with an object is actually very close to how we think about our Prev shoes and bags too. We want them to become part of someone’s life rather than just something they consume and move on from.

Creatively, paper also gives us freedom. We can make it weird, intimate, funny, existential. Those are all things that might be harder to put directly onto a shoe.

IRK: KIARA earned the PETA “Vegan Bag of the Year” title while drawing inspiration from nature’s hexagonal structures. What was the engineering process behind translating agricultural waste into such a resilient, architectural silhouette?

Taştekne & Koçak: KIARA looked simple once finished, but reaching that simplicity required extensive refinement.

The hexagon gave us a really strong starting geometry, but a Prev bag still has to work on a body. So there was a lot of back and forth around proportion, structure, how the material behaved at the edges and corners, how much reinforcement it needed, and how the bag would sit once it actually had things inside it.

One thing we’re quite obsessive about is not treating a plant-based material as a novelty. The material is important, obviously, but the final product still has to stand on its own as a really good bag. KIARA being named PETA’s Vegan Bag of the Year was special for exactly that reason. It felt like the stories for the design and the material had met in the right place.

IRK: Bringing plant-based materials to the global capital of leather craftsmanship feels deliberately provocative. What was the most honest or surprising reaction you received from traditional artisans when they touched and examined your pieces?

Taştekne & Koçak: Working with traditional leather artisans has always been essential to us. To prove plant-based materials support true craftsmanship, they must enter spaces where heritage leather expertise already thrives.

That has sometimes caused resistance. At times, our products were sidelined or outright refused. Yet we kept returning, connecting with the artisans, and occasionally bringing vegan treats. Every one of them has a different character and relationship with the craft, which has made the process incredibly interesting.

Our goal was never to walk into traditional craft spaces and say, “everything you’ve done is wrong.” We would much rather put another possibility on the table and let the Prev object make the argument for us. Over time, we even met artisans who examined the materials closely and simply said, “this is the future.” Those are probably the reactions that stay with us the most.

IRK: Without a permanent flagship, the annual Archive Sale feels like an intense, fleeting pop-up. Beyond moving archive pieces, what are the thrills and logistical challenges of hosting your digital community physically?

Taştekne & Koçak: The Archive Sale has become one of those things that grew much bigger than we ever expected. We do it once a year, and seeing hundreds of people lining up outside is still a little surreal.

Most of our relationship with the community happens through a screen, so the Archive Sale is probably the moment when that community becomes most visibly real to us. Suddenly you’re meeting people who have been following Prev for years, watching them search for a specific piece or size, seeing what they immediately gravitate towards. There’s an energy to it that you can’t recreate online.

The other side of that energy is the logistics. You’re bringing together archive pieces, samples, different sizes and one-offs, building a temporary retail space, managing a crowd and trying to make sure the Prev experience still feels personal even when there are hundreds of people coming through. It’s intense for the whole team.

But that’s also part of why we love it. It only exists for a very short time; everyone knows that, and there’s a kind of shared excitement in the room because of it.

IRK: There was once strong anticipation around Prev establishing a footprint in Paris. Is an international expansion still on the horizon, or is the current priority centered on refining new collections and opening a physical store in Turkey first?

Taştekne & Koçak: International expansion is still very much the direction we want Prev to take. In fact, we came very close to opening a store in Turkey, but because of the political climate at the time, we made a last-minute decision not to become part of the institution the store would have operated under. We also took part in the boycotts that followed and ended up holding the stock we had specifically produced for that store.

That decision was important to us, but it also had a very real financial impact. It slowed down our plans for Paris and affected how quickly we could move Prev internationally. So right now, the priority is to leave those losses behind and put our energy back into Paris.

We’re taking the first steps this Fashion Week with a pop-up in Paris, followed by a more permanent pop-up presence there. At the same time, Prev has recently started selling physically in the US through Wolf & Badger stores in New York and Los Angeles.

The bigger goal is to continue building a strong retail presence in Europe and the US, particularly through the right department stores, while preparing for our own physical space. As co-founders, we’re also planning to move to Paris, with the goal of opening our first own standalone store there in 2027.

IRK: Beyond the finished object, what unseen layer of Prev’s labor and creative discipline do you wish your audience understood more deeply?

Taştekne & Koçak: Probably how much work goes into saying no.

People see the final shoe, bag or image, but behind it there are so many materials we tested and rejected, prototypes that were almost right, ideas we loved but couldn’t make responsibly, and sometimes months of work that never becomes a product at all. The same discipline applies creatively. Not every good idea belongs in the Prev world, and a big part of the process is editing, simplifying and knowing when to leave something out.

Especially when you remove animal-derived materials from the equation, you can’t always take the most established or convenient route. A lot of our work is research, testing and problem-solving that nobody will ever see, while still making sure the final object feels unmistakably like Prev.

The customer shouldn’t have to carry the weight of all that effort. That difficulty is part of what Prev stands for. Starting a revolution and pushing for change comes at a cost, but in the end, it is absolutely worth it.

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Credits:

Hair & Makeup: Madin Ibragimova, Minou Meijers, Daria,  Batuhan Sara, Hamza Sara
Stylist: Layla Karabay, Misha Kratina, Şimal Gökçay, Umut Sımsıkı
Model: Zarina, Helena, Serap, Havas Diana
Producer & Casting Director: Ezgi Önen, Elif Taştekne, Emre Yavuz
Gaffer: Hyung Belkema
Production & Casting Coordinator: Aleyna İrten
Styling Assistant: Sueda
Creative Direction: Elif Taştekne
Creative Assistant: Mert Kenğer