One of our favourite things to do in the Turkish capital is to shop for Zeynep Keyman’s Ottoman-inspired products, at her Lokum Istanbul store. You know that risible travel magazine chestnut of “a beguiling mix of the old and the new”? Well… It’s that. It brings together the most fragrant and seductive aspects of the Bosphorus and its hallucinatory Bazaar, and repackages it for the 21st century.
Shopping aside, one of our favourite places to stay is at the Nişantaşi outpost of The House Hotel, sitting right above the Prada store, and around the corner from Rifat Ozbek’s Yastik. We like the other two House Hotels too, but Nişantaşi had the edge for the holistic Autoban interiors from designers Seyhan Özdemir and Sefer Çağlar.
So… the new Lokum Istanbul x House Hotels collaboration really pushes our buttons.
The line goes by the name of Istanbul’s Ritual, featuring body products that riff on the scents aligned with the church, mosque and synagogue close to the House Hotel’s Bosphorus property: hedges of jasmine, limes and wild roses.
As well as the in-suite miniatures at the House Hotels, there are full sized exclusives on sale in each lobby, in a very lovely tin (everything about Lokum Istanbul’s packaging is gorgeous).
We still recommend a trip to the mothership store, up river: Keyman’s signature lokum (aka Turkish delight), fruit-flavoured candies, floral-scented colognes, candles and bath products, have been on our radar since Anouska Hempel first designed the store in Kuruçeşme Beşiktaş in Istanbul, and then the second store in London’s Walton Street in 2011.
The interiors in both spaces, with the walls clad from top to bottom in their signature Ottoman-inspired Toile de Jouy and noir pom poms, are a journey in themselves, as is everything else that lines the neat black shelves. C