About Idil Vice

From fashion rebellion to education, self-trust, and a safer future for women and girls

I founded IDIL VICE in New York City in 1995 as an independent fashion label. Today, I understand that the brand began much earlier—and for a much deeper reason.

IDIL VICE was the invention of a young girl who needed a way to remain herself.

The pigtail logo character I created nearly three decades ago was never simply a fashion mascot. She represented the younger version of me: observant, creative, rebellious, and determined not to disappear. Before I had the words to explain what I had experienced, I had drawing, clothing, storytelling, and an inner voice that refused to give up.

What began as a fashion brand was also a survival strategy—a way to protect my identity, keep my truth alive, and turn difficult experiences into something visible, beautiful, and powerful.

My beginnings in Switzerland

I am a Swiss native with Turkish roots, raised in St. Gallen, Switzerland, a city with a centuries-old textile tradition. St. Gallen is internationally known for its extraordinary embroidery and fabrics, many of which have been used by the world’s leading couture houses.

Growing up in that environment shaped the way I saw clothing. Fashion was never just decoration to me. It was craftsmanship, communication, identity, protection, and social commentary.

I earned a BFA and a Master’s degree with honors in Graphic Design from the School of Design in St. Gallen. My fashion education developed differently. I taught myself garment construction by studying, dissecting, and reconstructing clothing. I combined that hands-on knowledge with my formal training in graphic design, branding, visual communication, photography, and marketing.

That combination became the foundation of IDIL VICE: clothing with a strong visual identity, a clear point of view, and a story behind every design.

New York City and the birth of IDIL VICE

In 1995, I left Switzerland and moved to New York City in search of a life that felt less traditional and more expansive.

I fell in love with American pop culture, street fashion, Hip Hop, Rock music, and the visual energy of the city. I began combining Swiss craftsmanship with colorful graphics, cultural references, athletic silhouettes, and rebellious styling.

IDIL VICE quickly found an audience within the European rave, club, and party culture of the mid-1990s. The collections blurred boundaries between streetwear, sportswear, fan culture, graphic design, and couture.

In 1996, I presented formal gowns with sneakers on the runway—an unexpected combination at the time that became one of the brand’s defining ideas. Long before celebrity merchandise became a major fashion category, I was creating limited-edition, fan-inspired collections that treated popular culture as a legitimate form of fashion storytelling.

Over the years, my work expanded into fashion design, art direction, branding, licensing, styling, casting, photography, digital commerce, and creative leadership.

Career highlights include creating the clothing concept for Swiss National Expo.02, being commissioned by Elvis Presley Enterprises in Memphis to design a couture fashion collection, and seeing IDIL VICE designs worn by artists and personalities including Gwen Stefani and Kelly Osbourne.

Through every stage, I remained committed to independent production and the belief that clothing could be imaginative, culturally relevant, responsibly made, and built to last. IDIL VICE became known for rebellious concept fashion, limited-edition pieces, quality construction, and its commitment to manufacturing in the United States.

The California chapter

In 2014, I brought IDIL VICE to the San Francisco Bay Area.

In the summer of 2022, I opened the first IDIL VICE flagship boutique and atelier in a historic Tudor-style building in the Oakland Hills. The architecture reminded me of the old-world character of St. Gallen and made the space feel like a bridge between my Swiss beginnings and my California life.

The boutique was more than a store. It was a working design studio, fitting room, community space, and creative home. I designed and produced women’s and men’s clothing, created custom pieces, offered alterations, and helped clients understand which shapes, proportions, and styles made them feel most like themselves.

Working directly with women reinforced something I had always understood: clothing is deeply connected to confidence, identity, safety, visibility, and the way we move through the world.

But during this chapter, my life and the purpose of my work began to change.

The deeper story behind the brand

A cancer scare was followed by a period of healing, reflection, and profound self-discovery. I began looking beyond the public story of the successful designer and asking what had truly driven me for so many years.

I realized that IDIL VICE had been created by a girl who was trying to save herself.

The rebellion in my work was not simply a fashion statement. It was my refusal to accept the pressures placed on girls and women: the pressure to be pleasing, accommodating, silent, attractive, agreeable, and disconnected from our own instincts.

The brand gave me something to hold on to. It allowed me to express the truth before I felt safe enough to speak it directly.

Later in life, I was also diagnosed with ADHD. That diagnosis did not change who I was. It gave me language for patterns I had lived with for decades.

It helped me understand the intensity of my creativity, my sensitivity, my nonlinear path, and the difficulties I experienced with overwhelm, consistency, organization, people-pleasing, and trusting my own needs. It also helped me recognize how easily undiagnosed girls and women can be misunderstood, blamed, manipulated, or left without the tools they need to protect themselves.

My late diagnosis allowed me to revisit my life with greater compassion. It also made me think about how different my path might have been if someone had explained these things to me when I was young.

IDIL VICE today

Today, IDIL VICE is evolving from a fashion label into an educational and creative brand for women and girls.

The fashion was never separate from this mission. It was the first language of it.

My work now brings together lived experience, visual storytelling, education, art, design, and advocacy. I speak openly about late-diagnosed ADHD, people-pleasing, boundaries, self-trust, self-worth, consent, healthy relationships, emotional safety, financial independence, and the warning signs girls and women are too often expected to recognize on their own.

My goal is to share the lessons many of us were never taught—and to give the girls coming after us better tools before they need them.

IDIL VICE is becoming a home for:

• Honest stories about growing up, surviving, and understanding yourself later in life

• Educational content about ADHD in girls and women

• Practical tools for boundaries, self-trust, consent, and personal safety

• Conversations between women, mothers, daughters, and younger generations

• Guides, journals, workbooks, cards, art, and wearable reminders

• Community programs, speaking, collaborations, and partnerships

• Fashion and design that continue to carry a message

This work is rooted in my personal experience and decades of creative practice. I do not present myself as a therapist or medical professional. I am a woman sharing what she lived, what she learned, what she wishes she had known, and what may help another woman recognize herself sooner.

A new kind of rebellion

For many years, I created out of rebellion. I was fighting to preserve my identity, prove my value, and survive experiences I did not yet fully understand.

Today, I no longer want to create from a need for approval or a constant state of opposition.

I want to create from clarity.

I want IDIL VICE to be proof that a woman can survive abuse, understand herself later in life, reclaim her voice, and build something meaningful from what she has endured.

I want younger women to know that being kind does not require abandoning themselves. That “no” is a complete sentence. That boundaries are not cruelty. That attention is not the same as love. That their discomfort matters. That they are allowed to trust their own perception. That they do not owe anyone access to their bodies, their time, or their future.

And I want women who received these lessons too late to know that it is still possible to begin again.

I am not abandoning the history of IDIL VICE. I am finally revealing what the brand was always about.

It was never only about clothing.

It was about identity, courage, truth, and the girl who refused to give up.

The lessons women were never taught—and the tools girls deserve before they need them.

Start here

Free download:

25 Things I Wish Someone Had Told Me Before I Turned 16

Idil is a Swiss-born, Turkish-rooted designer, creative director, educator, and founder of IDIL VICE. After three decades working across fashion, graphic design, branding, styling, and cultural storytelling, she is transforming her namesake label into an educational platform for women and girls. Drawing from her experiences as an abuse survivor and a late-diagnosed ADHD woman, Idil creates honest educational content and practical tools centered on boundaries, self-trust, personal safety, confidence, and the lessons women are too often left to learn alone.

Text Courtesy of Sportswear International.