Erdem Moralioglu Reflects on 20 Years of Fashion—and What Comes Next
3 min readIn 2005, Erdem Moralioglu came on the scene, already a talented designer who melded ladylike elegance with an intelligent voice. Over the course of two decades, many fashion brands have either shuttered or been bought by larger companies. What the still-independent Moralioglu has achieved is something special: maintaining Erdem as he wants it to be.
Erdem Moralioglu at work.
His George Sand-inspired runway debut in 2006 landed with a splash. Filled with wool coats, avian-patterned dresses, embroidery, and lace, the pieces felt refined in a classically British way, while remaining sophisticated and modern. In the intervening years, he’s dressed Michelle Obama, Kate Middleton, and Nicole Kidman, and designed costumes for the Royal Ballet, in collaboration with choreographer Christopher Wheeldon. In 2020, he was awarded an MBE. His pieces have been shown at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Victoria & Albert Museum, and the Louvre. “Twenty years feels both extraordinary and slightly surreal. When I showed my first collection, I certainly wasn’t thinking about anniversaries,” says Moralioglu, who is now a very youthful 48. But what the moment presents is an opportunity for him to take a wide-angle view of what he has built. “What matters most to me isn’t the milestone itself, but the fact that the work has been able to keep evolving. I’ve always seen each collection as another chapter, rather than a stand-alone moment. Looking back, I realize that certain ideas have quietly resurfaced over the years, transformed by time and different perspectives.”
A look from the fall 2026 collection.
His design process has changed very little as the brand has grown. “I still begin every collection with research, storytelling, and a woman whose life opens the door to a much larger world. That curiosity remains exactly as it was 20 years ago,” Moralioglu says. After growing up in Canada, he studied at London’s Royal College of Art and now lives in London with his husband. Throughout his career, he’s drawn inspiration from women like Deborah Cavendish, the Duchess of Devonshire—one of the famed Mitford sisters—as well as the English poet and author Radclyffe Hall, the contemporary painter Kaye Donachie, and the soprano Maria Callas. For his spring 2024 collection, the duchess was his muse, and the exhibit “Erdem: Imaginary Conversations” at Chatsworth House paired pieces from her archive with his own designs to illustrate how her style shaped the collection. The show included runway gowns made from remnants of the house’s curtains, embroidered by Cecily Lasnet, the duchess’s great-granddaughter and Stella Tennant’s daughter. “I’ve always been fascinated by remarkable women whose lives resist simple categorization,” he says. “Writers, performers, artists, explorers, collectors—they’re people who created their own worlds rather than fitting comfortably into someone else’s.”
Model Guinevere van Seenus wears a look from spring 2020.
Erdem’s fall 2026 collection let Moralioglu take a thoughtful look back at two decades of his inspirations. “The starting point was an impossible idea: What if all the extraordinary women who have inspired my work over the last 20 years could meet one another? Not as historical figures, but as contemporaries, sharing the same room, exchanging ideas and influencing each other,” he says. The collection, titled “The Imaginary Conversation,” was romantic and classically feminine, featuring embroidered dresses in textured satin, blazers lined in tulle, dark floral patterns, and wool pieces with embroidered flowers.
A look from the fall 2026 collection.
“The process felt very different from previous collections, because I wasn’t researching a singular person. I was researching my own archive. Rather than reproducing earlier work, I wanted to take fragments from different moments and combine them into something unexpected,” Moralioglu says. “Today I’m perhaps less interested in biography than in the emotional atmosphere surrounding a person. A single photograph, a room, a letter, a painting, or an object can sometimes reveal more than a chronology of events. I’m drawn to those fragments, because they leave space for imagination.”
The designer’s mood board for his fall 2024 collection.
There’s a timelessness to Erdem that might explain how, in a wildly changing fashion landscape, the brand has been able to maintain a genuine spirit. That’s not to say that things haven’t changed. They have—but on Moralioglu’s terms.
“Experience has taught me to trust instinct more, to know what deserves attention and what can be left unsaid,” the designer says. “As fashion has become increasingly fast and image-driven, I’ve found myself becoming even more committed to making clothes with longevity, emotional resonance, and exceptional craftsmanship. Those qualities feel more relevant to me now than ever.”
Lead image: Erdem fall 2024.
This story appears in the October 2026 issue of ELLE.
