Celebrating Two Decades of Decadent, Defiant Dialogue
Review of Erdem Fall 2026 Fashion Show
By Angela Baidoo
To celebrate twenty years in the industry as an independent brand may feel less like a milestone, and more like a miracle. As in just the last two decades luxury fashion has experienced a level of volatility (from a financial, geo-political, and consumer anxiety stance) that it is still navigating through today.
So, it is testament to Erdem Moralıoğlu’s resilience and steadfast dedication to honing his brand into one that celebrates multi-faceted, multi-talented, complex, and courageous women from across the ages. Women (men and the non-binary) that the designer has been in constant dialogue with his whole career, keeping an ongoing exchange with the past and the present, making the title of his anniversary collection, The Imaginary Conversation, perfectly apt.
THE COLLECTION
THE VIBE
Don’t Call it a Retrospective, Hacking the Archive, In Conversation
This year marks 20 years since Erdem founded his eponymous brand. Introducing British fashion to his uncompromising vision of modern femininity that is in constant dialogue with icons of the past and present. And the reason for today’s anniversary show title – ‘The Imaginary Conversation’.
The designer, since the beginning, confessed to being in constant conversation with women. From the past and the present, using memory and imagination. These women form the inspiration behind the work, and from the British aristocracy to historically marginalised queer writers their ‘lives and legacies’ are what have resonated.
Alluding to the writers, dancers, outsiders, icons, botanists, and actresses who resist the neat definitions that society requires of women, the same could be said for Erdem. Not to be dismissed as a brand only catering to women who want to feel their most feminine in a beautifully structured dress, over the years the designers collections have also defied definition. Full-skirted gowns paired with floral quilted Barbour jackets or an impeccably tailored pair of pinstripe trousers with a ribbed Henley vest overlaid with a crystal embellished tunic. Hems and edges are often left raw as his signature calling card, celebrating the messy or imperfect lives of women as they are.
Flat shoes are often a feature in his collections, frothing with feathers or with a twist on a masculine classic such as a double-buckled monk shoe. There is an understanding of what women across the ages would have wanted to wear to navigate the world. It also goes against the grain to combine the pretty with the practical, but in many ways that’s what keeps the brand forward facing, and dare I say, youthful.
Speaking to The Impression backstage Erdem Moralıoğlu insisted “I was determined that the collection wasn’t going to feel retrospective.” On the contrary, the designer chose to hack into his archives and re-contextualise them. Even re-surfacing a design from his graduate Royal Academy of Art graduate collection, saying “I was thinking back to my time at the RCA, and my graduation collection which had a couture-y embellished coat worn with some jeans and Converse. There was something interesting in hacking it in half [for fall 2026] and putting it with a pair of jeans.” This look encapsulates the ease in which the brands clothes are meant to be worn. Pannier dresses with pockets, dresses made from shredded tweeds or doubled and patchworked together, and tailored skirt suits pulled inside out and the inner workings made visible.
Though they may look precious, the designer has never felt that clothes should be, and today with the undoing of the past to design the future, he was encouraging us to revisit his archives anew and consider the clothes, and the characters, that have made the man and the brand.
THE QUOTE
I was determined that the collection wasn’t going to feel retrospective…When you have a body of work you’re associated with certain tropes and languages and some people can feel trapped by that and for some people it feels safe…I loved the idea of being irreverent and throwing away what the past is and undoing it.
Erdem Moralıoğlu, Creative Director, Erdem
THE WRAP UP
Erdem was, and will ways be, for real women, with lives well lived. With icons of the past continuously influencing the present the designer taps an endless well of women to remain in ‘Imaginary Conversation’ with. Taking what serves from the past to inform the future, he has metaphorically raided the wardrobes of his muses – Debo the Duchess, Maris Callas, and Adele Astaire – and remixed what he found into defiant new proposals.
This creative practice is what has kept Erdem at the forefront of the British design scene, yet under the radar enough to exempt him from being drawn into the unnecessary online conversations that have consumed the industry of late.
The designers success is grounded in learning from the past – the legacies and lives of radical women – and bringing that forward into the present to inform his collections. Creating clothes that feel pre-loved in the way they hold an historical context. These are clothes to be worn today and forever.
