Erdem Moralioglu’s progress around the great art establishments of London town has arrived this season at the life-drawing studio of The Royal Academy of Arts in Piccadilly. Look about behind the models: There you’ll glimpse the purpose-built Georgian benches and the plaster casts of Greco-Roman sculpture stacked on shelves in the oldest art school in Britain, founded 350 years ago, in 1768 (you can smell the oil paint in here—it’s still very much going). Erdem has one of his subtle hidden purposes for bringing our attention to the place. Because—guess what?—there were three centuries when women were not allowed in here to draw the naked human form. Not until Laura Knight was made the first full Royal Academician, just as British women were finally getting the vote (well, some of them), in 1918. Knight’s paintings were all over his mood board—her Self-Portrait in which she shows a back view of herself painting a nude model—as well as documentary photographs, fashion illustrations, and memorabilia leading up to the Second World War.
“I was thinking about her more in the ’40s, really,” the designer related, pointing out the padded shoulders, belted waists, and floral dresses, as well as the quirky turbans he commissioned from his longtime millinery collaborator Noel Stewart, with whom he became friends when they were students at The Royal College of Art. It all goes back to art school with Erdem—and his research in libraries, bookstores, and galleries. Knight, he pointed out, was commissioned as a war artist; she documented the lives of women at work in the military, and eventually (harrowingly) the Nuremberg trials. There were also more practical Blitz-period trouser suits, a jumpsuit, and a couple of sober tailored coats.
One day it would be wonderful to see Erdem costume a movie; he’s already won a Design Museum award for his Royal Ballet costumes this year. That, though, would require significant time off from the treadmill of fashion (not that he ever complains). You always sense the necessity to him of finding a narrative, chasing a person or the spirit of a time in his work. Even if it ultimately results in looking nothing much like his storytelling, he knows how he got to making those beautiful creations: mercurial sequin poured on white lace, floaty high-waisted print dresses, quirky rose-printed tights. They’re done with at least as much conviction and finesse as his runway collection, that’s safe to say. Still: Look, it’s nearly the holidays! There’s another collection to do just around the corner in February, and you can bet your life that Erdem will already have written his next artistic script by now.
