Erdem at 20:
Recut and Reimagined
Recut and Reimagined
For Fall/Winter 2026, on the twentieth anniversary of his brand, Erdem Moralıoğlu remixed his archive into something grander, rawer and more emotional, illustrating the evolution of heroines that were never as perfect as they seemed.
ame Helen Mirren and Glenn Close, who is American but a dame in spirit, came backstage to congratulate Erdem Moralıoğlu on the twentieth anniversary of his brand. “We’re fighting over the same piece,” Dame Helen told him. “I can make one big enough to encompass both of you,” he quipped. With his beautiful floral dresses and stately-home energy, Erdem was always beloved by the ladies who lunch. But if these two screen legends serve as embodiments of his grande-dame clientele, they were never the prissy and polite ones. They are femmes fatales, to use a term that’s stuck with Close since Fatal Attraction.
“I was determined that the collection wasn’t going to feel retrospective. My shows are normally about the forensic idea of a woman,” Moralıoğlusaid, referring to the elaborate narratives he spins on historical figures, “but what would happen if all these women spoke to each other? A dialogue between all these women, and men and non-binary people that I’ve studied throughout.” Presented in Tate Britain to a soundtrack that oscillated between hits and genres, he staged a kind of remix not just of previous inspirations but of his own archival pieces and fabrics, recut and repurposed into new expressions.
I was determined that the collection wasn’t going to feel retrospective. My shows are normally about the forensic idea of a woman, but what would happen if all these women spoke to each other? A dialogue between all these women, and men and non-binary people that I’ve studied throughout.
Erdem Moralıoğlu
What transpired from those constellations was how much grander and dramatic his dames have grown over the last two decades. The eerie, suspenseful neatness that characterised Moralıoğlu’s woman in the first decade of his oeuvre has gradually deteriorated into something much more emotional: a deconstructed jacket, a dress in tatters, a marabou sandal so eccentric it’s volatile. If he once chased perfection, he now seems more interested in imperfection… in the real human rawness behind the preened exteriors of his historical heroines.
You could put that transition down to his own maturity, but also to the way Moralıoğlu always reflected his surroundings in his work. Because the truth is that his pretty and once-pristine floral universe was never an expression of conservatism, but rather a demonstration of the desire and disorder and danger that always lie beneath that polished surface. As his women’s most innermost feelings have become more visible over the years, so have his own emotions. His twentieth anniversary collection was a pure manifestation of his heart and creativity, and what an amazing dressmaker he is.
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