Turkish Delight on 5th Avenue

The Geylan family, who was displaced from Bursa, Yenisehir County to the Kosovo region of Yugoslavia, by the Ottoman Empire in the 14th century, after the War of Kosovo, established and lived in Gilan Village.
After the Ottoman–Russian war between the years of 1877 and 1878, for a while father Geylan manufactured custom shoes and traded them. Then, he immigrated back to Bursa in the 1930s, at the beginning of WWII, just before Hitler’s invasion of Yugoslavia.  
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Christina Aquilera wears Gilan.

In Bursa, the Geylan brothers occupied themselves with trading for a very long time. In 1980, while they were studying at the university they started to work with filigree master Kuddusi Saygin. They started to sell the filigree jewelry they manufactured in a 15 square foot shop in the Covered Bazaar of Bursa.

In 1986, the brothers went to Istanbul to grow their business, where they built a large workshop. During this time, they started to design and manufacture jewelry for celebrity families and artists.

The Geylan brothers, after establishing a design brand with Levent Piskiner in 1993, opened their first store in Istanbul’s Akmerkez shopping mall and started to sell the jewelry they designed under the name "Gilan”.

In 1990, their first jewelry fashion show, their first professional design crew, and their first haute couture jewelry designs were achieved by Gilan. Gilan became a status symbol in the jewelry field.
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Drew Barrymore wears Gilan earings.

Gilan opened its second store in Ankara and the third in Suadiye, Istanbul in 2000. And with the store it opened in December, 2003 in The Crown Building on 5th Avenue and 57th street in New York, the capital of fashion and finance, Gilan took its first step on the path to becoming a world brand.

Gilan gained experience in the American market through this mall and in September took yet another step and opened a flagship store on 5th Avenue and became neighbors with such world famous brands as Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Gucci and Prada. With this store, Gilan aims at being one of the most popular jewelry brands in the U.S. market.      
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Jewelry Special Issue, October 2006
Last modified onSaturday, 06 May 2017 10:07