Rana Kutvan, was born in Istanbul, completed her high school education at Nişantaşı Kız Lisesi. She first studied fashion for one year at LCC and then for two years at İstasyon Art Academy. After graduating from fashion school she worked as a stylist for various companies. Between 1997 and 2008, she lived in Manhattan, New York. In order to further her expertise in fashion she took fashion courses at Parsons School of Design and The Fashion Institute of Technology in New York.
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In addition to her fashion education, Kutvan pursued a double major in psychology and the Thomas Hunter Special Honors Program reserved for the university's top students at Hunter College, part of the City University of New York. She graduated cum laude. During her time at Hunter College, she interned at the institute of Dr. Albert Ellis, one of the world’s leading psychologists. Through this internship, she had the opportunity to closely study Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT), which was developed by Ellis.
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Passionate about both fashion and psychology, Kutvan founded a clothing brand called Rana NYC while living in New York and participated in various fashion fairs in the U.S. Between 2005 and 2008, she established and served as the editor of NYC2IST, an online fashion magazine aiming to build a fashion bridge between New York and Istanbul. She managed a team of 15 writers. In 2007, NYC2IST won the second-best blog award in the blog category of the Golden Spider Awards. Additionally, Kutvan contributed articles to magazines such as Our Future and Seninle.
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In 2008, Kutvan returned to Turkey for four years and, in May of that year, founded Turkey’s first personal development and style consultancy center, Karakter A, combining her passions for fashion and psychology. Between 2009 and 2011, she provided image consultancy services for on-screen personalities at CNN TÜRK. She has provided corporate and individual services to clients including Braun, CNN TÜRK, Aras Kargo, TURKCELL, Kuveyt Türk, and DoÄŸan Holding. Alongside Karakter A, she received supervision from Professor Dr. Kerem Doksat between 2008 and 2012.
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Kutvan is also one of the partners of the Innovation Management and TRIZ Institute, established in 2019. Between 2018 and 2023, she wrote weekly articles on psychology for the website Uplifers. Recognizing that fashion psychology is not widely known in Turkey, she founded the Fashion Psychology Academy to raise awareness in this field. Her book Fashion Psychology, the first book on fashion psychology in Turkey, will be available to readers soon in 2024. Kutvan speaks advanced English, intermediate French, Italian, and Azerbaijani.
