Modern Romance: The Story Behind Erdem’s 2023 Ramadan Collection
Designer Erdem reflects on how his latest Ramadan capsule line could influence his future ready-to-wear collections
Long and lean and sporting thick dark-rimmed glasses, designer Erdem Moralioglu looks like the fashion equivalent of Clark Kent. Charming, mild-mannered, with a love of antiques, classic films and history, Erdem – who goes by his first name, just like his signature label – seems like the perfect embodiment of a proper English gentleman. If you crossed him on the streets of London you would be hard-pressed to imagine that he has been a sartorial Superman to countless women (including a significant number of royals) for close to two decades.
But as unassuming as Erdem might read in person, his designs are anything but. His artistic waters run deep and flow with bold bloom prints, rivers of lace, satin and tulle and crest with beaded embellishments. His dresses are sculptural, romantic and tinged with emotion. Each of his designs is born from meticulous research, a love of the past and a desire to show how mining bygone eras can help to shape a strong fashion future.
“I have a backwards lens towards the future,” confirms the designer. “I think it is because I was born in Canada, my father was Turkish and emigrated to Canada, and my mother was English and also emigrated to Canada. So I think there was a ruthlessness in my upbringing. When you are the first generation, you are very different from your parents; but also from everyone else around you. I think my fascination with history came from this and simply wanting to understand myself. My mother and I would always watch English television and historical dramas which seemed kind of suburban in comparison to my Canadian upbringing – I guess I was clinging to two things that had roots,” he adds.
Erdem’s slow but steady win’s the race approach to building his independent fashion house is also reflected in the intentional way he has approached his Ramadan capsule collections. Meticulously crafting an organic extension of his brand and design aesthetic that is enhanced by the fact that he has often travelled to the Middle East and has a better understanding of the culture and vestimentary needs of the region, compared to many other designers, which gives him a clear creative advantage.
The designer himself admits that producing a collection for the Holy Month makes a lot of sense for his brand. “I have been to Qatar a few times. I remember going to the Museum of Islamic Arts and becoming absolutely fascinated and intrigued by it. I have also visited Kuwait and Dubai and I’m half Turkish which of course is a different region, but there is so much of a cultural overlap. I haven’t been to Saudi, which is somewhere I would love to go,” says Erdem about his travels to the region.
For Erdem, the joy of creating this Ramadan collection, which is being sold exclusively on Net-A-Porter, came in the exploration of new silhouettes that honoured the beauty of the art of the human hand. “It was so nice to be able to create and cut new shapes, and involve special fabrications and embroideries that were specifically in celebration of that time of year. I loved the whole process,” exclaims the designer. “I mean you still have to create something that widely caters in terms of modesty, but I have always been fascinated by that language anyways, so it resulted in a collection that I found incredibly inspiring.”
Erdem was so inspired by the challenge of the new shapes that he created for this Ramadan capsule collection that he is now looking at how he can transfer them more globally into the main line going forward. For him, the end goal of all of his work is to create pieces that are timeless. No doubt that by incorporating some of the codes of Ramadan dressing into his overarching body of work even more Erdem pieces will find an evergreen permanence that can stand the test of time.
But as much as creating pieces with longevity in mind is his fervent wish Erdem – who notably often dresses Catherine, Princess of Wales and other members of the royal family, not to mention has spent hours combing through the personal, royal collections and archives at Windsor – has a hard time getting his head around the idea that one day his work might be part of those very archives for future designers to turn to for inspiration. The notion gives him pause. “Well I mean that’s a strange thought,” he says after a moment “but… I hope so!”
It’s hard to imagine the royal archives not including a few of Erdem’s designs in the future, especially considering that a number of his collections have taken inspiration from the British royal family and in particular Queen Elizabeth. In fact, Erdem’s Spring/Summer 23 collection was presented in London on the eve of the state funeral of the monarch, to whom he paid a fitting, understated tribute to on the runway by shrouding some of his models in long lace-edged veils.
As for this year’s Ramadan collection, the creative throughline ended up being less about telling a story or narrative and more about designing with a very specific purpose. Or as Erdem succinctly puts it, “The Ramadan collection was about talking a language and creating pieces, especially for ‘her’– the women of the region.”
Images Supplied.