In the last quarter of the 19th century Ottoman male dress, in the form of the fez and long, straight-collared 'istanbulin' coat, became widely popular across much of South, Central and Southeast Asia. By focusing on this style’s spread and the kinds of associations it held to those who wore it specifically in the Indian cities of Delhi and Hyderabad, this paper asks: what explains the wide transnational attraction of an Ottoman style in the era of high imperialism, and what enabled this fashion to spread so quickly across a huge geography and even to cities far inland? While the adoption of fez and istanbulin could communicate an array of possible meanings, I argue that the fashion exemplified new ideals of urbane masculinity then emerging across the wider region which sought to express a civilized, cosmopolitan, yet consciously non-Western identity. The paper’s conclusions draw on over two years of fieldwork in archives, libraries and museums in Istanbul, London, Delhi and Hyderabad. It deploys collections of late 19th century popular studio photography to trace the transnational path and timeline of this fashion’s spread, which are combined with contemporary coverage and commentaries on Ottoman affairs and discussions of fashion in Urdu periodicals, books and travelogues and the British colonial archive. Both the fez and istanbulin first appear in India in the 1870s-80s, in a context shaped by deepening incorporation into transcontinental networks of trade and migration, and a dynamic new visual public sphere created by cheap lithographic and photographic reproduction. Popularization of the style was primarily a phenomenon of imitation rather than physical exchange, inspired by the ubiquitous images of Ottoman Sultans and statesmen in early Urdu periodicals like Avadh Akhbar and various regional Indian Punch magazines, and by the perceived successes of the Ottomans’ modernizing tanzimat reforms. At the same time, the common combination of the fez and istanbulin with other accoutrements of urban civility –watches, cigarettes, restaurants etc – among upwardly mobile professional classes of all backgrounds points to an appeal that goes beyond simple assertions of anti-colonial or religious solidarity. Rather, it suggests how political sentiments overlapped with new forms of aspirational consumption, expressed here in a sense of membership in an Ottoman-influenced, cosmopolitan, but non-European modernity.