Exuberance. Erdem AW24

Erdem Moralıoğlu is at his best when he leaves behind his comfort zone of florals and regality. In the halls of the British Museum, amidst the ancient grandeur of the Parthenon Marbles, a modern muse was reborn through imagination of the designer. As the autumn-winter 2024 fashion show progressed, a vivid homage to the American-Greek soprano Maria Callas and her iconic debut as Medea at La Scala in Milan unfolded. From the pea-green opera coat with its extravagantly exaggerated collar at the start to the same silhouette at the finale, this time strewn with a rose print on white satin, but quilted, almost like the memory of a 1950s housecoat, this certainly was an exuberant Erdem moment. In between we had the designer’s extended tribute to Callas, her greatness, her status, and style “almost as a pop idol of the ’50s,” as he put it. The complex psychologies of extraordinary women of the past have always been the fuel for Moralioglu’s layered design approach; the plots always blending into his own design narrative: a romantic, flowered, maybe raw-edged recasting of formal social-occasion dress codes. Callas’ wardrobe – the tiny-waisted, full-skirted dresses; draped scarf necklines; swing coats – were in full force. Carmine red dresses, roses attached to the toes of slingbacks, as if thrown at her feet onstage, and then satin pajamas and shoes evoking marabou slippers were yet another hints we are looking at a modern-day interpretation of a legend’s wardrobe.