The last time I caught up with Erdem Moralioğlu was a sun-drenched afternoon at the vast grounds of Chatsworth House. The most famous châtelaine of this decadent estate was the Dowager Duchess of Devonshire (better known, perhaps, as Deborah Mitford), who is the subject of his SS24 collection. Months later, the blue skies now decidedly grey, we’re in his office in east London’s Whitechapel. And yet, it’s just as decorous as Chatsworth in its own unique way. The walls are covered with bookshelves bulging with his famed library, which features a selection of vintage magazines, Richard Avedon and Cecil Beaton collections, as well as his beloved first-edition books, including Aubrey Beardsley, Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness, Christopher Isherwood’s A Single Man and Jaws by Peter Benchley. ‘Oh, I love Jaws,’ Moralioğlu enthuses.
On one corner of his cluttered desk perches a small stone bust of a woman’s head, with an open, pretty face, hair tied at the nape; at the other end, a Japanese lucky cat, arm up, waving at the painted portraits balanced on the wall behind. ‘She’s new,’ he says of the bust. ‘I’m trying to figure out whether to keep the plinth part.’ He is a voracious collector, checking his online bids at small auction houses in ‘Scandinavia, France [and] Italy’ first thing in the morning. ‘I never remember anything I’ve won. I’ll just remember what I’ve lost. There was another bust I was bidding on… Just loads, countless, too sad to talk about,’ he deadpans.
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It’s not been an easy year to navigate as an independent designer in London. The collapse of retailer Matches (a key stockist for many independent British brands), alongside luxury’s steady downturn, has thrown many brands into shark-infested financial waters. But Moralioğlu, whose label makes £16 million in annual sales, remains resilient. ‘It reinforces how important it is to be able to reach your client yourself,’ he says. ‘More than ever, it’s very important to have your own relationship with your clients, and to not be heavily weighed in with one [retail] partner. I think that is the most important lesson for anyone. Knowing that has helped us weather it, but it was difficult, challenging. It was tricky.’
Arguably, no path towards establishing a voice in the luxury-fashion arena is straightforward. Moralioğlu has certainly witnessed a fair few of his contemporaries (Christopher Kane, Jonathan Saunders, Meadham Kirchhoff, Peter Pilotto) fall along the way during his near two decades in the business. ‘The landscape in London [now] is very different,’ he says. ‘But it’s funny. I kind of feel like I’ve just started. It really doesn’t feel that long, which I find terrifying.’ Technically, he points out, his 20th anniversary will be in February 2026. ‘I’m a teenager still,’ he muses. He will actually turn 47 in November. ‘When you hit 40, everything starts going quite quickly. But no, it feels really exciting.’
It should do. He has established his house as a lynchpin of the British fashion scene, and it is a shining example of what supporting young talent can achieve. His first collection after graduating from the Royal College of Art (which he sold to Barneys in New York) was funded through the now-defunct Fashion Fringe award. Further help came from the British Fashion Council (BFC), through its support schemes NewGen and the Designer Fashion Fund. Caroline Rush, the outgoing CEO of the BFC, describes him as a ‘British fashion legend’.
‘From his first collections, he has brought a couture-like finish to his clothes,’ she says. ‘His work is rooted in meticulous craftsmanship and explores femininity through bold, graceful silhouettes, embellishment and master cutting.’
He has, of course, dressed high-profile women for their fair share of viral moments – Michelle Obama, the Princess of Wales, Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, Nicole Kidman – but his fans are a refreshingly broad church. Beth Ditto, Lena Dunham, Andrea Riseborough and Bimini Bon Boulash were among those who sat frontrow at his show in September. Watching Drag Race on the sofa is a guilty pleasure of his, he tells me. ‘I’m a huge fan. I love Bimini, she’s amazing.’ Dunham, he reminds me, accompanied him to the 2013 Met Gala. Ditto, meanwhile, has been a friend of his ‘for years’.
Another win: his sizing runs up to a UK 24. ‘Maybe it’s something we should talk more about, but my customers and clients exist in lots of shapes – to be able to accommodate that is really important. We exist in different ways, that’s very logical. How thrilling to see so many different people wearing what you do.’
It is all a fair distance from where he started, in the suburbs of Montreal with his British mother, Turkish father and twin sister Sara, now a journalist and documentary film-maker. (He is 15 minutes older, he tells me: ‘Every minute counts when you’re a twin.’) ‘It was an idyllic childhood. We lived in a yellow-stucco bungalow that was like a cube with a door in the middle, almost like a child’s drawing of a house. We had a big lake at the end of the street, where you did swimming lessons in the summer and skiing lessons in the winter.’
Growing up, he drew constantly. ‘I was quite shy and probably quite odd to the other kids. I was fascinated by how women dressed, and my mum. I found that kind of femininity powerful and interesting. She always wore the Shalimar perfume by Guerlain. I remember the ceremony of going to the Guerlain counter at the local mall and thinking, “I’m buying something from Paris,” how amazing and chic that was as a 10-year-old.’
Fashion was the only thing Moralioğlu wanted to do, and he harboured plans to study in London. He missed the deadline for the Central Saint Martins application, but got into the Royal College of Art. ‘A sliding-doors moment’, but a good one.
It was there that he met his husband Philip Joseph, an architect from a buoyantly creative (and successful) family (his elder brothers are behind homeware company JosephJoseph). They married in 2019, having been together for 16 years. ‘When we got together, marriage wasn’t even legal. You think it’s not going to change anything, but there is something intangible [that happens].’
A final-year project set by Alber Elbaz planted a seed that has come to crystallise his creative approach. ‘His brief was to design for a character. That opened up a section of my brain that really stayed with me. The idea that you could design around something or someone who exists or doesn’t exist, is alive, is not alive…’
See his SS24 ode to ‘Debo’ (the late Dowager Duchess of Devonshire), which took in vintage fragments from archive fabrics at Chatsworth House, as well as kitschy references to her obsession with Elvis and chickens (one skirt was given a shredded effect, as if a hen had pecked at it). The opening look of that show was an extravagant opera coat; half floral, half wax jacket, and part of a collaboration with Barbour, which is expanding into six styles for this winter.
The classic Beaufort jacket is given a delicate, floral-rose print and thick, corduroy collar, while the Dahlia, a shorter wax jacket, is nipped in at the waist, mirroring his feminine tailoring. ‘I love Barbour, it’s so quintessentially British,’ he says. ‘It was fun to play with the language of what I do and apply it to those fabrications.’
His store on South Audley Street in Mayfair opened in 2015. His husband designed it as an ode to the Erdem woman. ‘He’s seen everything since I was a student. Out of everyone, he understood most the idea of who this woman was – what kind of carpet would she have in her apartment, what kind of art would she collect?’ It is a beautiful space that also feels personal. Alongside piles of Cecil Beaton books and Jean Couteau prints hangs a painting of a woman in soporific tones of blue, her hand on her chin, looking across the space. It is a portrait by Kaye Donachie of his late mother. She passed away in 2007, a few years after he had also lost his father to cancer. ‘My mum never saw the store, but I like the idea of her kind of living in this space and watching over everything.’ A reproduction of the portrait also sits in his newly opened second outpost in Seoul.
There is a table near the door where his Smythson-printed show notes and references to the current collection sit, allowing clients to fully breathe in his world of ideas. Maria Callas appears to have been the muse for the clothes hanging on the rack, specifically her 1953 performance of Medea at La Scala in Milan. ‘Medea’s story and Callas’ story, it was this weird mash up in my head. She’s half on-stage, half off, half-dressed, half not.’ Hence elaborate coats bursting with feathers, cinematic satin gowns, as well as rough-edged silk pyjamas and swathes of cocooning knitwear.
His latest SS25 show, in the Great Court of the British Museum, took its cue from Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness, the literary classic depicting a lesbian relationship, which was withdrawn from publication. The collection straddled a pretty tension between traditional masculine and feminine tropes; loosely cut, double-breasted tailoring created with Edward Sexton of Savile Row, as well as sheer flapper dresses scattered with embroidery and softly faded denim car coats, which looked as if someone had thrown crystals over them. Moralioğlu is deft at extrapolating something modern from his precisely researched historical references (his husband gifted him membership of the London Library, which he tries to visit every Tuesday). There’s always an underlying glimmer of subversion.
‘The fact that Erdem has exceptionally prevailed among that generation of talented designers is a testament to his depth of vision,’ says Judd Crane, Executive Buying Director at Selfridges. ‘There are other designers who speak of their inspirations from the art world and the archive of design and sartorial culture, but Erdem is unparalleled in his intellectual manifestation of this all; in terms of the garments themselves, the way he presents them, the explanation of his inspiration and the eventual narrative.’
I wonder what his younger, shy self would think of his life now – his 90-strong team, marriage and home in Bloomsbury. ‘Surprised,’ he muses, smiling, ‘and so happy that it worked out. It’s a dream.’
The Erdem x Barbour SS25 collection launches in January 2025.
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