Under the ‘Tunis’ entry of ?emseddin Sami’s authoritative Ottoman dictionary, Kamus-i Turki (1898), the Ottoman-Albanian intellectual provides the following phrase to illustrate the use of the word in common parlance: “The Tunis Fez - the large and thick type of fez.” In the late Ottoman Empire, the Eyalet of Tunis came to be associated with the red woollen headdress so closely identified with Ottoman sartorial modernity. From the eighteenth century onwards, first summoned by Sultanic decrees and later leaving spontaneously in search for more lucrative markets, Tunisian fez makers emigrated from their North African province to Istanbul. They settled in Tahtakale and in the Grand Bazaar, forming an entire community in the heart of the imperial capital. At the turn of the twentieth century, there were approximately three hundred active Tunisian fez makers in Istanbul. This paper examines the everyday life of the Tunisian fez maker community of Istanbul in the late nineteenth century. Using Ottoman encyclopaedias, newspapers, visual sources, court records, and government reports, it demonstrates that this community was an integral part of the social fabric of fin-de-siècle Istanbul. In doing so, it aims to challenge the long-standing notion that, by the nineteenth century, the province of Tunis and its subjects had become completely severed from the rest of the Ottoman world. For Tunisian fez makers, Tunis was inextricably tied to the rest of the empire. Through their continuous back-and-forth between Tunis and Istanbul, they fashioned an Ottoman-Tunisian space where cultural connections, economic opportunities, and political capital were constantly being produced. For the Sublime Porte, treating Tunisian fez makers as Ottoman subjects came at a political cost: in virtue of its protectorate over Tunis, the French government considered Tunisians living in Istanbul as its protégés, enjoying French consular protection and thus ineligible to be treated as local subjects. Studying the community of Tunisian fez makers in the Ottoman capital reveals a rich cultural and political landscape, one that is otherwise invisible from the premise that Tunis was independent from Istanbul.