Erdem: the great romantic
The London designer has built an empire out of clothes that marry romance and soft rebellion – and, as such, appeal to everyone from royals, to A-listers, to politicans. Now, for his latest venture, he’s launching a new wallpaper collection with De Gourna
erdem moralioglu is an avid collector. ‘I love the hunt!’ he says. We’ve barely sat down to talk in the office of his east London HQ before he springs up to show me a Derek Jarman painted photograph, recently scored from an auction. A Keith Vaughan painting sits above his desk; a poised posse of busts – one by Jared French, another by Wilhelm Lehmbruck, others of unknown provenance unearthed in Tuscany and France – line the windowsill behind it. Artworks still in their ‘FRAGILE’ packaging rest against the walls; books have sprouted off the stuffed shelves on to piles on the floor.
‘Philip [ Joseph, his architect husband] has this extraordinary, amazing, very specific eye that’s just wonderful and I’m…’ he pauses and smiles, ‘more all over the place.’
It’s not just things Erdem collects, however, but stories (his bedside table is piled high with books, from Polly Stenham’s plays to Susan Sontag). He is as much a narrator as he is a designer; his are clothes with Once Upon A Time sewn into their seams. ‘I’ve always been really drawn to that idea of storytelling,’ he explains. The results of that fascination are collections that take a deep dive into various wonderful, worldly and wildly glamorous muses: Adele Astaire, Tina Modotti and the Queen have all provided starting points for recent outings.
Indeed, at a time when the fashion industry is questioning the very existence of the show model, Erdem makes a compelling case for the catwalk. When many presentations hold little more weight than an Instagram caption, Erdem’s shows are poetic, cinematic in their grandeur and weighted by an almost novelistic notion of escapism. ‘To take an audience somewhere for eight minutes is a great power,’ he says. ‘To have that platform as a springboard to create a world for just a short period of time and to get to say something every season is a tremendous privilege.’
Thanks to his narrative instincts, Erdem weaves entire worlds that extend much further than clothes. His latest venture takes this one step further. A collaboration with De Gournay, the wallpaper specialists renowned for their florid, hand-painted panels. ‘I’ve always been really attracted to things that have a human hand,’ says Erdem, who had been eyeing up some 18th-century chinoiserie panels from the Pierre Bergé estate sale at Sotheby’s, when the opportunity arose. ‘There was something about the language of it that spoke to me’.
For the collection he revisited designs from his own archives, bouncing ideas back and forth ‘like tennis’ with De Gournay design director Jemma Cave. The collection of hand-painted silk and Xuan papers features lush botanical scenes and is peppered with ‘little secrets’, like Turkish egrets and Canadian warblers. ‘He was not afraid to be bold and the result is the most wondrously fresh, vibrant and uplifting designs,’ says Hannah Cecil Gurney, De Gournay’s business development director. ‘Both our companies have a very special dedication to beauty, within very specific fields. We are both dedicated to exceptional quality and are happy to dive into a laborious design process to ensure the results are as awesome as possible.’ The partnership feels so organic, so obvious, that it’s a wonder they haven’t joined forces sooner. Testament to the synergy not only between the two brands, but between fashion and interiors now, there is also a corresponding clothing capsule rendered in the same print.
It isn’t the only project he’s been working on. Days before we meet, Erdem unveiled his A/W ’20 collection. An homage to Cecil Beaton held in the National Portrait Gallery (which opens an exhibition of his photographs this week), bias-cut dresses, chequerboard prints, opera coats and magnificent feathered headdresses all starred. You can imagine today’s Bright
Young Things wearing any of them.
For the show, the gallery floors were lined with silver foil, a nod to the improvised sets Beaton would make when he was starting out. Before models and personalities came knocking, he would practise his craft on his sisters Baba and Nancy. Similarly, Erdem would photograph his twin Sara – today, an award-winning documentary maker – for his college portfolio applications. ‘I’ve always been really interested in the feminine and the language of femininity and I think that might have something to do with having a twin who’s the opposite sex,’ he says. ‘There was always an extraordinary power to the feminine.’
Although you get the sense that Erdem would have a riot rummaging through Beaton’s oeuvre regardless, there are also touching personal parallels between the two men. Neither was born into high society, the world they would ultimately define and document. Beaton came from a middleclass family; Erdem was born in Montreal in 1977, to an English mother and Turkish father, ‘somewhere very far away from the fashion industry’.
Today, however, he is very much in the centre of it. Next season marks the 15th anniversary for the brand and, a few months ago, Erdem appointed his first ever CEO, Philippa Nixon. ‘It feels like a turning of a page,’ he says of the milestone. What makes his success all the more impressive is that he’s done it while remaining independent. There is no conglomerate steering his path, rather Erdem built his business by creating clothes women really, really want. ‘His are grown-up clothes that are easy for women to fall in love with, understand and wear,’ says Emma Elwick-bates, freelance fashion editor and Vogue (US) constribitor, friend and fan, who wore bespoke Erdem to her wedding. ‘He swept in and proved powerfully (and globally) that you can be both creative and commercial’.
So heart-flutteringly lovely are Erdem’s designs, that it would be easy to dismiss them as relevant only to the 1%. And while, yes, those showstopping gowns come to life on red carpets and at gala dinners, his work is underpinned with an effortless sensibility that makes the pieces thoroughly modern.
In a season where I’d witnessed several models struggle and stumble in impossible heels, it felt refreshing to see his women walk in comfy, substantial flatforms at Erdem’s A/W ’20 show. Look closer and you’ll see that ease is a recurring theme in his collections. ‘I hate the idea of something that feels kind of tortured,’ he says. It’s what gives his work enduring relevancy. ‘I love that his historical narratives are always impeccably played out in the finest clothing for now,’ says Elwick-bates. ‘And the denouement? As soon as you put on one of his creations the story becomes your own.’ ‘The romantic opulence of his clothes doesn’t diminish their contemporary character,’ agrees Cecil Gurney. So, yes, royals and A-listers love Erdem, but so does Texan state senator Wendy Davis, who wore one of his dresses to filibuster a restrictive abortion bill for more than 11 hours in 2013.
‘I’ve always been attracted to things that have a tension to them and things that don’t necessarily go together,’ Erdem says. This tension doesn’t just ensure Erdem’s designs are relevant, but also invests them with tacit subversion. Look closer and you’ll see there’s spikiness veiled in gossamer and rebellion tied up in organza ribbons. It’s a pertinent reminder that clothes do not need to be cast from a tough, hard-edged mould in order to make a statement. For A/W ’19, for instance, he was inspired by Frederick Park and Ernest Boulton – known as ‘Fanny’ and ‘Stella’ – Victorian-era clerks who lived as women in order to be together (in a neat coincidence, Erdem and Philip are currently renovating a Bloomsbury house near where Fanny and Stella lived). The collection was beautiful, and a touching exploration of gender and individuality.
‘I think clothes are an extension of who you are,’ says Erdem. ‘It’s not different to when you’re a teenager, frustrated and trying to express who you are. Everything is a bit of a clue’. Ostensibly, his own clothes – Nike trainers, thick-rimmed glasses, an understated sweater – appear to give little away, but they do reveal something. ‘I look at so much visual information every day, I very rarely think about what I’m wearing.’
Luckily, he is thinking about what we’ll be wearing. Quite what that looks like, however, is a story for the next chapter. Erdem X De Gournay*, available from 19 March. erdem.com, degournay.com