“I’m often associated with dresses,” Erdem Moralioglu began, as he was leafing through his resort collection in his London office. “But interestingly, in my store in South Audley Street, it’s also tailoring that people are buying.”
While marrying up both sides of his repertoire this season, he spent many hours at the London Library, his habitual haunt for research. There he hit on the work, life, and loves of Radclyffe Hall, the British lesbian author whose 1928 novel The Well of Loneliness caused a scandal, was subjected to an obscenity trial, and banned. An at-home photograph of Hall, crop-haired in a smoking jacket and bow tie, with her lover, the sculptor and poet Una Troubridge, who is wearing a shimmery metallic 1920s cocktail dress, offered the coda for the collection.
Knowing Moralioglu’s train of thought, this character-study is the precursor to developing his fall show, just as he sketched out his terrific runway odes to Deborah Cavendish, the Duchess of Devonshire, and Maria Callas in his last two pre-seasons. The balance and contrast between masculine tailoring—coats, wide-leg trousers, waistcoats—and vaguely flapper-era draped silhouettes is nicely caught, each side as detailed and attractive as the other.
Theme apart, Moralioglu’s work is grounded in his intelligent understanding of what women need for occasion dressing—a particular kind of practical modern romanticism that never errs on the too-much. There’s the elegant simplicity of draped dresses, strewn with 3-d flowers, with an asymmetric cape aflutter on one shoulder, a
shape also echoed in a swathed-neck sweater. In the tailored pieces, again, there are flowers—as appliques on a swaggering Prince of Wales coat, or prints superimposed on nipped-waist skirt suits. One is a utilitarian country outdoor look, excellent for the kind of rainy weather the UK has been putting up with this spring—or perhaps, who knows, great for a dog-show? For Radclyffe Hall and Una Troubridge were also dog-lovers, with a shared enthusiasm for raising and showing dachshunds and other pedigree canines.
Before long, one feels, we’re sure to be seeing much more of the history of early 20th century lesbian culture and style from Moralioglu. His mood-board was full of forgotten and illicit imagery of women-only clubs and erotica. “This is the sort of direction I’m going in,” he hinted, not giving away too much.