Erdem Moralioglu likes a man in a boatneck. He appreciates a slightly shortened blazer sleeve. And he loves the idea of the male twinset. We know this now because the designer—after 15 years in womenswear— is making his first proposal for a men’s wardrobe. “I think it was important to think of him as her brother,” Moralioglu said on a video call from London, continuing his tradition of speaking about his wearers as characters in the romantic narratives that frame his work. “He’s the brother or the friend that wears her clothes in his own way.”
Moralioglu and his twin sister were raised in the suburbs of Canada by a British mother, who would immerse herself and her children in English literature and film as a form of cultivated homesickness. She instilled in him a British gentlemanliness and a feminine sensibility, which materialized exquisitely in his first men’s collection. This wasn’t the “boyfriend counterpart” to his female customer—the way many designers will describe their menswear—but her companion: a like-minded male energy, a confidante, a masculine manifestation of herself.
Captured with certain melancholia on West Wittering Beach near Dungeness, the first Erdem men’s look to see the light of day was a beige trench coat crafted in tonal floral jacquard. Adapted from his recent women’s resort collection, the fabric looked like sturdy cotton twill but had all the sensitivity of the designer’s botanical dreams. It would be altmodisch to call it a balance between the masculine and the feminine. Rather, Moralioglu is about imbuing everything he makes with a certain soul; a memory that feels older and wiser than the garment itself.
He evoked classic sartorial dress codes in silhouettes cinched with cummerbunds, elevating the casual character of square and straight chinos, the fit of which he had spent ages getting just right. Slightly shrunken tailored jackets had a 1920s boyishness to them à la Brideshead Revisited, the 1981 screen version of which wasn’t on Moralioglu’s mood board but certainly part of his mother’s TV viewing when he was a teenager. “I always like the idea of a historical costume distorted through a 1970s lens,” he said, listing The Great Gatsby, The Damned, Barry Lyndon, and Cabaret. There were traces of them all in these clothes.
He described the cut of jackets as “not fitted-fitted, but precise,” adding: “There’s nothing chicer than a double-breasted jacket worn like a cardigan.” In reality, there’s nothing chicer than menswear that hits the elusive spot between fancy and functional. The camp-collared shirts in stripes and moody florals, which looked a little bit lived-in, illustrated that notion to precision: flattering summer clothes you can actually wear in the summer. For chilly evenings, dreamy bright mohair jumpers in colors like “egg yolk” and “intense turquoise” embodied the fantasy version of the classic Jermyn Street knitwear Moralioglu wears himself.
The collection was partly inspired by the work, passions, and wardrobe of Derek Jarman, whose video for the Pet Shop Boys’ “It’s a Sin” Moralioglu would dance to his in his teenage bedroom, and whose uniform way of dressing spoke to the designer’s penchant for permanence. Jarman’s influence informed elements that fused the sturdy with the pretty, or the sexy with the dainty, like damask boiler suits, rich velvety corduroy trousers, and floral short-shorts. (Moralioglu wears the slightly longer and boxier version.)
On paper, interpreting the Erdem brand in masculine form could easily have turned out a lot frillier than it did. But like he so often demonstrates in his womenswear, this designer is a master at tempering an expression, delicately adding an air of grunge or a suggestion of sex to offset anything that might feel too dainty or, indeed, too dandy. His menswear debut was a prime exercise in that skill, and a welcome addition to the post-pandemic fashion world. Asked why now was the right time for menswear, he said lockdown had made him act on ideas. “Maybe this strange year of stopping finally allowed him to come to life.”
