8 minute read
SKETCH BOOKS
ERDEM MORALIOGLU
The London Library Magazine no. 49 Oct 2020
Inspiration from the Stacks lands on international catwalks in the collections of British designer Erdem Moralioglu. He talks to Library Vice President and former editor-in-chief of British Vogue, Alexandra Shulman, about clothes, books and desk envy
Erdem Moralioglu
Image: Tom Mannion
BOOKS
Full disclosure: Erdem Moralioglu is one of my favourite designers. His feminine and decorative aesthetic has won him a celebrity following that includes actors Keira Knightley and Claire Foy, and the Duchess of Cambridge. And when I edited British Vogue, until 2017, I often wore his beautiful, romantic outfits at the parties and dinners that I hosted, many of which he generously gave me. Moralioglu is one of the cohort of British designers that propelled British fashion into a position of key player in the fashion world from the middle of the 2000s. He launched his own label, Erdem, in 2005 and, along with names such as Christopher Kane, Mary Katranzou and Roksanda Ilincic, brought a professional creativity to the general perception of British fashion – which was of wild imagination, hampered by unpredictability and chaos. There’s little chaotic about Moralioglu. He is pinprick neat with tamed, short dark hair in a side parting, dark sloe eyes, usually behind thick-rimmed spectacles, and a trim
Beaton in Vogue provided inspiration for Erdem's autumn/winter 2020 collection (below)
figure dressed in an almost preppy style, which adds to an appearance younger than his 42 years. He speaks in the indefinable Canadian accent, which – and I can say this as I am the daughter of a Canadian – often sounds as if he is swallowing a syllable or two, and he possesses a sharp, laconic sense of humour.
We are talking over Zoom – Moralioglu from his east London, Aldgate studio, and me from my home in the west of the city. Behind him there is a large painted portrait of a woman – a very Erdem woman with bobbed, styled hair, probably painted in the 1920s, her gaze direct, her presence strong. It’s the kind of woman he has often used as an imaginative jumping-off point for the fashion collections he has produced for the past 15 years. The reason we are talking is that, along with being one of the most talented designers of his generation, Moralioglu is also a devoted member of The London Library. It’s a place where he finds inspiration and information, and before lockdown would often be found at a desk in the stacks. “I love books,” he says, trying to tilt his laptop to show me heavily laden bookcases in his studio. “And so Philip [Johnson, an architect and his husband of two years] got me
Moralioglu's moodboard for Erdem's autumn/winter 2020 collection
a membership for my 40th birthday, which he renews and pays for every year.” He laughs. “If you’re married there’s no getting out of it.”
Moralioglu’s childhood was far from the quiet, polished environs of St James’s Square. He and his twin sister Sara are the children of a Turkish chemical engineer who met his Birmingham-born mother when they both worked in Geneva. They married and moved to Montreal, where Moralioglu had a classic, outdoorsy Canadian childhood, but early on was fascinated by the clothes and style of his mother and her friends. His mother, who sadly died as his career was really taking off, was a huge influence, reading him books about artists such as John Singer Sargent and encouraging his interest in clothes from a young age.
But he attributes much of his attitude to designing for women to the fact of having a twin of the opposite sex. He once told me, in an interview for Vogue, “Going through every stage of your development with someone who is the opposite sex is something I can't escape in how I approach what I do. I'm not afraid of women, of bodies. I'm not trying to flatten things.” Not only is he not trying “to flatten things”, but he uses the women he perceives as powerful and strong to build his collections around; such as the Italian photographer and activist Tina Modotti, or aviator Amelia Earhart. On some occasions he designs around women of his imagination, whose life and style he visualises with as much detail as a real person, using them as inspiration for designs and the beautiful shows he stages to show his clothes.
In the Library, Moralioglu is generally to be found working among one of the art collections. “I take a sketchbook, usually just my wire-bound ones, my mechanical pencils, my erasers, a water bottle, usually a phone charger, and I just plug my earphones in and go for it,” he says. Like many a Library member, he is furiously attached to the particular place he likes to work. “It’s very specific. I had a very specific desk that I used to work at at the Royal College of Art [where he both did a post-graduate degree and worked as a librarian]. Anyone I find at my desk I usually feel a deep sense of resentment towards.” An emotion I suspect many Library regulars will understand. “Yes. The book will not be written. The collection will not be designed. The day will not go as planned...”
Fashion designers work in different ways. Not all of them sketch themselves. But despite now being able to employ a substantial team and having a flagship store on Mayfair’s North Audley Street, Moralioglu remains a designer who brings every detail to the finished product. He understands the dramatic differences that the warp and weave of fabric brings, and describes materials with passionate enthusiasm. Many of his clothes are made in silks and satins and lace, richly ornate and often depicting flora and fauna in a dramatic mash-up of period style that
creates something both modern and timeless. And much of the research comes from his work in the Library.
His current Erdem autumn/winter collection was inspired by photographer Cecil Beaton – who was once a Library member – and was shown back in February in a catwalk show at the National Portrait Gallery (with which Moralioglu has a close relationship). This was when the Beaton show, curated by photographic historian Robin Muir, was due to open for the whole summer. Who could have known then, as the parade of models with their Nancy Cunard-esque hair and darkly painted eyes walked the galleries, that the Beaton exhibition would have to close only days after opening and the Erdem collection would not be seen by buyers in the traditional showrooms.
That collection is an excellent example of how Moralioglu rarely copies in a literal manner, but infiltrates notions into his design. “I was studying Beaton really before he was a very big photographer at Vogue. It was earlier, more like the 1920s, when his father had given him his camera and he was photographing his sisters Baba and Nancy. But then, looking at the book Beaton in Vogue, some of his society portraits spoke to me.” A portrait of American socialite Barbara Hutton might trigger an idea for a neckline, “and then I kind of digest it and think about it in different forms. I just sketch and sketch, again and again and usually I have piles and piles of sketches often of almost the same thing”. What emerged was a collection of primarily monochrome and silver clothes, referencing the black and white photography of Beaton, along with the silver of the albumen prints and the shimmering metallic fabrics he liked to use to promote drama and fantasy in his photographs. You can spot the Pierrot costume that Beaton adored for his many theatrical portraits and the geometrical prints and shapes that became a defining part of the deco period.
A key collaborator on this show was The London Library’s Yvette Dickerson, one of the Member Services team “who is”, Moralioglu says, “extraordinary, and has a great way of digesting things. I was talking to her about masculinity and women dressed as men and the kind of gender fluidity explored at that time. And then suddenly, I get from her a wonderful reading list or an article on mannish suits from the 1930s. She can get into that kind of research that I sometimes find challenging – accessing articles and different periodicals. And she came to the show and could see it. I love that.”
Yvette Dickerson at The London Library
Image: Suzie McCracken
Like many members, Moralioglu’s routine has radically changed during recent months, but in more normal times he likes to arrive at the Library in the morning, hunker down for the day and perhaps grab a lunch from the local Itsu. Or alternatively, arrive at the end of the day and collect his books before taking a taxi home to Dalston, although he and Philip are renovating a house in Bloomsbury.
Fashion has been heavily hit by the effects of the pandemic and it’s unclear how fashion businesses will re-emerge at the end. But Moralioglu has been able to keep designing and producing. “I think Covid has allowed moments of calm that one wouldn’t necessarily be afforded. The good days are really good and you feel like you are getting somewhere – and the bad days are just really quite bad. I think sometimes when something’s taken away from you, like the ability to go to the Library and research, you have to really be quite focused and decide more clearly what you want and what you need. So maybe there’s something in that.” And maybe there is. • Alexandra Shulman is an author and Vice President of The London Library
Alexandra Shulman in 2016, wearing an Erdem dress
Image: Richard Young/Shutterstock
