The Medium is the Message
Review of Erdem Spring 2026 Fashion Show
By Angela Baidoo
THE COLLECTION
THE VIBE
Between Worlds, Dreamlike Meditations, Multi-faceted Femininity
Living in a constant state of uncertainty has led to a growing compulsion to seek out those we perceive as connected to a higher power, to tell us our future or read our fortunes. And when we are left reeling from a constant barrage of negative news each time we open our phones, it’s a pastime whose moment in the zeitgeist has come again. With good reason, as it couldn’t hurt to put our faith in something not of this world.
Prefacing this review with the post-show deep dive, the enthusiasm that pours forth from Erdem Moralıoğlu when speaking to The Impression backstage this season (and every season for that matter) never fails to bring each collection to life. His collections, if only taken at face value can be viewed as simply as another show of beautiful, historically imbued clothes. So, a future indulgence for the brand and invested members of the press would be the facilitation of a little pre-show insight with the designer to pour over references, mood boards, swatches and historical facts, as well as where exactly he unearths all of his obscure historical figures.
For Spring 2026 the collection was split into three ‘acts’ which referenced today’s muse, revealed as Swiss medium Hélène Smith who practiced her dark arts in the late 19th century, and whose trances transported her back and forth across time and into multiple planetary dimensions. Revealed backstage these transcendental travels formed the basis of the collections trifecta format, as the designer reinvigorated her most prolific visions of living past lives as a ‘member of the French court, as an Indian princess, and as a traveller among Martian skies’ as outlined in today’s notes. Delving further the designer discovered her work when she was exhibited as part of the Venice Bienalle a few years ago when female surrealists were platformed. Falling into obscurity over time, her limited surviving body of work once forgotten by history is being revived through the medium of fashion, as the designer noted “She died in complete obscurity…and had created this extraordinary body of work, so I love the idea of reimagining her inside my head”.
As if it were in fact foretold, her ‘Romantic Cycles’ – as coined by her psychologist Théodore Flournoy who also wrote ‘From India to Planet Mars’ seen prominently on the desigenrs mood board- manifested themselves in a collection that Hélène Smith may have worn herself in any one of her incarnations as ‘monarch, mystic, or Martian’. To ground the designers imaginative expressions for next spring, this collection can be explained as an embrace of the ‘many facets of femininity’.
She would go into these trances and draw what she saw…and her trances were divided into three romantic cycles and this idea formed the spine of the collection”
Erdem Moralıoğlu, creative director, Erdem
Shifting from Marie Antoinette’s panniers and antique patchworked lace (perfectly co-ordinating with the V&A’s latest exhibition on her influence across fashion, design, film and art) to an uplifting shot of acidic lime and hot pink which the designer noted had come from his travels to South-east Asia where he spent time in Rajahstan, rendering these pops of colour in linen which gave the garments a modern, yet rustic finish. The alien life-forms also popped up in subtle ways, such as in the embroidered symbols of an interstellar alphabet or sewn as a patch on the sleeve hems of tailored blazers. Part of an ongoing unofficial collection stamp series premiered each season – for spring 2025 The Well of Loneliness book cover was reprinted as the patch.
THE DIRECTION
THE QUOTE
[In her romantic cycles]…the first she thought she was part of the court of Marie Antoinette, the second a Hindu princess and in the third she thought she was an alien and developed her own Martian alphabet. Look 1 was a nod to Marie Antoinette with a structured pannier and we superimposed the antique lace from the turn of the century and [added in black embroidery with] the alphabet that she developed”
Erdem Moralıoğlu, creative director, Erdem
THE WRAP UP
Erdem’s practice of research and refinement, referencing the obscure and the infamous gives his work a heightened level of importance within British fashion. As if the designer is setting out to preserve the stories of lives well lived within the clothes he designs. Never veering into the costume-y, the rejection of perfection gives his work a confident nonchalance that is often lacking in the occasion market. Raw edges, loose threads, patchwork layering that lacks uniformity, and a blend of both demure and mini dress lengths ensure that this will remain the case, as decadence is for the everyday and these clothes should not be ‘saved’ for sometime special.
