Brides across the globe wear wedding dresses made by Turkish designers during the happiest moments of their lives. Turkey's ready-to-wear clothing sector sells wedding dresses to 40 countries in the Americas, Europe, Africa and the Middle East. The sector sells hundreds of products such as pants, T-shirts, suits and shirts to many countries across the world. In recent years, it has made a breakthrough in the export of wedding dresses, wedding suits and evening dresses. Turkey's ready-to-wear clothing sector exports increased by 3.6 percent in 2018 year-on-year, reaching $17.6 billion, according to data from the Turkish Exporters Assembly (TİM).
On Jan. 22-25, Turkey hosted IF Wedding Fashion İzmir, the largest wedding dress, wedding suit and evening dress fair in the sector in Europe, welcoming procurement delegations from 90 countries.
Aegean Clothing Manufacturers Association Chairman Atınç Abay told Anadolu Agency (AA) that they aimed to make a name for both İzmir and Turkey through the IF Wedding Fashion İzmir.
Indicating that the product with the highest value-added in the ready-to-wear clothing sector are wedding dresses, Abay said, "As far as kilogram price goes, wedding dress could easily exceed $100. We sell wedding dresses to the Middle East and European countries, and especially neighboring countries."
Emphasizing that Turkish wedding dresses are preferred in 40 countries in the world, Abay noted that they brought procurement committees from 90 countries to the fair this year. "I think that wedding dresses will be exported to over 40 countries this year," he told. Underling that the sector contributes to employment as well as to exports, Abay said that seven out of 10 wedding dresses produced in Turkey are produced in İzmir.
"İzmir, the city where the wedding dress sector is clustered, became number-one city when we crowned this clustering with design," he added.
Aegean Ready-to-Wear Clothing Exporters Association Chairman Burak Sertbaş stressed that the quality of IF Wedding Fashion İzmir increased in all respects. Highlighting that Turkey is one of the movers and shakers of the wedding dress fashion in the world, Sertbaş said, "We are a wedding dress manufacturing country preferred by the Middle East and Russia. We will gradually enter Europe as well. I saw Italians at the fair."
Indicating that they will soon start producing European-style wedding dresses, Sertbaş noted that Europeans prefer plain wedding dresses with little darker colors like beige. However, Middle Eastern brides prefer more flamboyant ones, he added.
Sertbaş further noted that they aim to reach a billion dollars in wedding dress exports in 2019.
Pointing out that İzmir comes to the fore in the wedding dresses sector while Istanbul comes to the fore in the evening dress sector, Sertbaş said, "We shape the world fashion in the ready-to-wear clothing industry. Although we cannot sell brand names, we have started selling designs. Our fashion is being sold."
