Yigit Turhan and Carine Roitfeld on Beauty, Butterflies, and Body Horror

Turkish author Yigit Turhan‘s debut horror novel Their Monstrous Hearts emerges from an intimate space of loss and discovery. Written while grieving his grandmother’s death, the book draws inspiration from the opulent world she left behind—mysterious artifacts tucked away under beds and in forgotten corners of closets. But perhaps most pivotal to Turhan’s creative genesis was a single image from Tom Ford’s 2001 jewelry campaign in Vogue, shot by Carine Roitfeld, capturing what he describes as “an immortal love between an older couple.” In Turhan’s recent conversation with Roitfeld, his longtime contemporary in the Paris fashion world, she reflected on the campaign’s controversial reception: “It was one of my last issues for Vogue and everyone of course said it was horrible, like it was insane to see two old people kissing and loving themselves.” Below, the pair explore aging’s true gifts, impossible loves, insects, and the erotic horror films that have shaped their artistic sensibilities.–JULIETTE JEFFERS

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CARINE ROITFELD: I’m not a professional on Zoom like you. I think you have a great light.

YIGIT TURHAN: I also have an iMac, so it just stays where I put it. You’re on your phone.

ROITFELD: It’s a phone because I think I look horrible on my Mac. Sorry. So I just read four paragraphs of your book because I don’t have great eyes and reading is difficult for me. But I will finish it because it has become exciting now. I was thinking about why you finally chose me for this?

TURHAN: Why I chose you, that’s what we start with. Well, you were literally the only one I had in mind. Because when I started writing this novel, it came from a place of love, because I had lost my grandmother and I was grieving. She has been a very important figure in my life. She was this very opulent character; obsessed with fashion, obsessed with collecting, always by my side, always checking in. And when I lost her, I didn’t know how to deal with it. I went back to Ankara and where she lived and I started going through her things to understand what she left behind after such a full life. We found many different things. One was like a butterfly painting under her bed, and she hated butterflies. Another thing was a pair of old dusty loafers in this closet. But she had corridors full of shoe closets, all very colorful and very feminine. So I was like, “Did she have a secret life that we were not aware of?” Anyway, I came back home and I started working on this novel as a way of dealing with grief. By recreating her in a completely parallel universe, in a horror setting, it became more of a search for beauty and what it means for my life: like, why am I obsessed with the idea of beauty and immortality? So long story short, your name came up because you’ve done so many things that were inspiring to me. One of the pictures that I had on my mood board when I was writing the book was a picture of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in Venice, and another one was your editorial from 2001. It’s an immortal love between an older couple, and you see that they have a thirst for each other as if they’re in their teenage years.

ROITFELD: Yes. It was a photo shoot from Tom Ford. He shot the story for a Christmas issue when he was the editor-in-chief. I think it was one of my last issues for Vogue and everyone of course said it was horrible, like it was insane to see two old people kissing and loving themselves. Mostly I think the jewelry advertisers didn’t like it. And that was strange to me, because jewelry is better when you get older. Getting old gives you more access to so many other things.

TURHAN: I think so too. Especially when you don’t lose that sense of wonder and thirst for life. I’m obsessed with the idea of time because I feel like we invented it thinking we were doing something good, and then we became victims of it. But back to jewelry, I was thinking it’s also very beautiful when it becomes like a secret language between lovers, like from that editorial and the story about Elizabeth and Richard. He used to go to Codognato in Venice while she was filming and he would pick one piece of jewelry every day for her. 

ROITFELD: My god, she was so lucky to be married to Richard Burton. He is one of my biggest icons. So sexy. And she married twice with him.

TURHAN: She married twice with him, yeah. Do you have a piece of jewelry that is very personal to you? 

ROITFELD: Yes, it’s my compression of César.

TURHAN: That’s beautiful.

ROITFELD: The idea is just genius. César was having some friends over and he told them, “Oh, if you have a lot of jewelry, like a souvenir of your grandmother, give it to me, I’ll make a compression.” I think it’s the smartest thing to do, because you have all the jewelry of your family, a pearl, a bit of diamond, everything mixed together. I think it’s beautiful. 

TURHAN: It’s very particular. If you were a butterfly, what would you be called? 

ROITFELD: Oh, I didn’t think about this. You talk a lot about the monarch, so I read everything about the monarch. I think “Lady Grandma” is quite beautiful. I want my grandkids to call me “Lady Grandma,” like Queen Mother. 

TURHAN: I like Lady Grandma. Maybe that’s my next book, “Lady Grandma.”

ROITFELD: It’s a good name, no? 

TURHAN: When I picked the butterfly, I was obsessed with this idea that, at the end of today, we are talking about an insect. And if I asked you about spiders, or about a cockroach, you probably don’t like them. They probably were not inspiration in the industry that we work for. I have never seen a cockroach print in the 15 years that I’ve been working. 

ROITFELD: The butterfly is beautiful, but when it comes to me, I hate them. They frighten me for no reason. But there is something maybe magical about them that makes them mysterious. And I don’t feel comfortable with a butterfly. I don’t know why. 

TURHAN: Yeah. When I was a kid I was quite shy and my favorite game was hide and seek. And I learned that the first rule of the game is that if you want to win, you should hide in plain sight because people will go looking for you in the craziest places, but they will never look at what is in front of their eyes. So when I was trying to pick the insect for the book, I said a butterfly is a good idea because it’s universally adored. Nobody suspects a butterfly. I like this duality–like a caterpillar spends all of its life as a caterpillar and one day goes into a chrysalis and then comes out as a butterfly. These are the same insects.

ROITFELD: But Yigit, when you were a young boy, you were beautiful or not?

TURHAN: I was very beautiful as a kid. Then I became less beautiful, I think. I mean, I didn’t have any self-confidence, but I’m looking at my pictures now and I feel like I was such a beautiful kid. I would love to have a son that looks like me.

ROITFELD: Because when I was a young kid, I was ugly. Really ugly. I was really not beautiful when I was young. So I had this moment of people looking at me and saying, “Oh my god, poor girl.” It took me many years, maybe eight years to be nice. But you learn a lot like this, too. Some people already are beautiful and successful. Some have to fight a lot because they’re not beautiful or they have no money or they have no relations. But I was really not beautiful like the caterpillar when I was young.

TURHAN: But Carine, what’s your biggest lesson so far?

ROITFELD: My biggest lesson was to have confidence. I had no confidence, and one day I decided I would be able to say “no,” and this changed my life. Because I’m a nice person and I wanted people to like me in general, because I’m very insecure in a way. So when people invite me to go see them, I always say yes, because I was anxious that people didn’t like me. At the moment I learned to say no, I think it’s like 15 years ago maybe, this changed my life. Totally. I’m sure you say a lot of “yes.” 

TURHAN: I say a lot of yes, yes.

ROITFELD: One day you have to change and it’s not because you’re going to say no that people are going to like you less. Now I’m more confident, but I’m always a bit shy. I’m a Virgo. Virgo can be very boring or very wild. Really, I am a very boring hard worker, and sometimes I can be wild.

TURHAN: Virgos are great, they’re very hardworking.

ROITFELD: Yes. Tom Ford is a Virgo. You asked me one question and I really want to answer you because I think it’s a crazy one: “What is my favorite horror film?”

TURHAN: Yeah. I want to know a horror film that you love, style-wise. Because the Gothic ideas and the sex appeal and everything you’ve done inspired me for this book, so I think you will have one.

ROITFELD: So the film is French, it’s called La Nuit des Morts Vivants. It’s horrible. It’s very creepy. There’s a cemetery, blah, blah, blah, blah. You are terrified. I think I was very young and I went with, not a boyfriend, but just a date, let’s say. And after we finished, it was the first time I had sex with someone.

TURHAN: And how did it go?

ROITFELD: Well, not amazing to be honest with you. Not amazing because this film makes me–

TURHAN: Oh my god, I was just googling it. You watched Night of the Living Dead?

ROITFELD: Yes.

TURHAN: Oh my god. Why did you pick that specific night? Was this a date?

ROITFELD: I think it was a guy that I met in a nightclub, older than me, and after dinner he said, “Do you want to see a film?” I say, “Okay.” I don’t know why he chose this film. Maybe he has an idea in his head that it will put him in a horny mood. I was 17, or something like that. So I cannot forget this film. It was a very, very terrible film. 

TURHAN: It’s very creepy. 

ROITFELD: It’s very creepy, with Michael Jackson, but it’s more creepy than Michael Jackson. But I love the theme. Now, I’m very interested in black and white films. Yesterday I watched [Battleship] Potemkin, about the revolution in Odessa. I’m not crazy about Chucky, though. Everyone hates Chucky, the little killer.

TURHAN: The doll? 

ROITFELD: I don’t care. I think it’s ugly. But I love the old feminine black and white films. When you have Dracula and things like that, I think it’s so strong. The images are so fantastic.

TURHAN: I also love the cinematography of the [Alfred] Hitchcock films. They’re great too, and they’re almost shot like editorials. When you look at Vertigo, when you look at The Birds.

ROITFELD: Yes. They never made a film about a big butterfly attack, but it could be possible.

TURHAN: Killing someone with excess beauty.

ROITFELD: Exactly. Killing with beauty is good. But if you are a normal girl and you follow Instagram all day and you’re not so beautiful, but you’re seeing the beauty of the other one, it’s terrible. Because it’s a place to be beautiful, and you feel more and more ugly. When you see all these images of these fortunate people who are so beautiful, it makes you feel so ugly. It’s very difficult.

TURHAN: It’s super difficult. When I was growing up I didn’t have Instagram, obviously. There wasn’t even internet. So the people I saw were in a limited quantity and they were the people who lived on my street or who went to school with me. Now, for a normal Instagram account, I feel like everybody has a million followers. They’re looking at so many images all day, so their idea about beauty is very homogeneous, because they look at the same thing over and over.

ROITFELD: They look at Bella [Hadid] all day long. They just sink into these beautiful girls. Anyway, I don’t watch so much Instagram. I think it’s a bit sad. I would have been destroyed as a teenager.

TURHAN: Did you see the film The Substance with Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley? 

ROITFELD: Not yet. It’s my next one. I heard that Margaret Qualley is fantastic in the film. She was almost an idea for a cover because of that film.

TURHAN: Yeah. It’s a lot of body horror. We are obsessed with our bodies.

ROITFELD: Yeah. Everyone is going to the gym in the morning. It’s terrible. But for a person like me—look, I turned 70. It’s tough. It is difficult to get old. But I don’t do surgery, or that sort of thing. I’m lucky with my DNA and with smoking, which is great for the skin, too. But let’s go back to the butterfly. When you had the butterfly inside of the book with elastic, I opened the book and the butterfly came out. I screamed. 

TURHAN: Yes. It was the marketeer in me. I said to the publisher, “It’s nice when you have the book, but in fashion we love to package it in a better way.” So I found it on Amazon, these butterflies that you can just attach. I asked the publisher in the US, “Can I send you like a thousand butterflies to put in the books?” And they said, “How does it work?” So I taught them the twisting. My mom called me, she was the first one to get one, and she said, “I almost had a heart attack. I’m too old for this.”

ROITFELD: Yes, everyone got a heart attack. For me, butterflies are not a nice creature. It’s beautiful, but there is something mean in that creature. The side of the wings, sometimes it looks like a skull. For me, it is an insect from the dead.

TURHAN: It’s interesting you mentioned that because in the book, I use a lot of flowers and I picked Tuberose because this specific butterfly monarch feeds from it. The smell of Tuberose is one of the strongest ones. They used to create Tuberose fields to block the smell of death from the cemeteries, because it’s so strong and so opulent. Then at a certain point it was banned in a lot of countries because it was very sexual, the way it smells is very carnal.

ROITFELD: I put a lot of Tuberose in my perfume. Fracas is the first one with Tuberose.

TURHAN: There are two more Tuberose that I love. One is Serge Lutens.

ROITFELD: Serge Lutens is the best one. Serge Lutens is my hero. 

TURHAN: He’s a genius. Now that you brought it up, I have to ask you, my favorite one is Sebastian, which I used for a while. Who was Sebastian?

ROITFELD: Sebastian is still someone. He is my best friend and he’s from Argentina. It’s like an impossible love, because he prefers boys. He’s so selfish. Everything about himself, and I say that in a fun way. But I support him because he’s my impossible love. 

TURHAN: I love impossible love. This has been a lot of fun. I was very anxious before doing it because I’m not used to interviews. But we always have fun, Carine. 

ROITFELD: I told you my horrible stories. 

TURHAN: Well, I won’t forget The Night of the Living Dead. I will watch it with a different eye next time I see it.

ROITFELD: Let me know. Sometimes something horrible makes you a bit horny, a bit sexual. That film makes me sexual.