Sarah Brown, who wore Erdem to open London Fashion Week, is just one of his many high-profile fans. The rising star of British design talks to Roya Nikkhah
Posted by Lucky on Feb 22, 2010
Erdem is so busy putting the finishing touches to a hand-embroidered cashmere-and-silk poncho for tomorrow’s catwalk show that he is oblivious to having missed one of London Fashion Week’s most hotly anticipated moments: what the Prime Minister’s wife would wear to open the biggest event in Britain’s fashion calendar.
When I tell him that, in fact, Sarah Brown donned a printed Erdem dress for her moment in the spotlight, he laughs. “No way? That’s wild!”
Samantha Cameron is also a fan, and sported an Erdem jacket when she arrived at the Conservative Party conference in Manchester last year. (Indeed, they recently collaborated on a set of notebooks and diaries at Smythson, where she is creative director.) And Michelle Obama’s people called on Erdem to rustle up one of his “watercolour” floral-print skirts for the First Lady to wear to an official function last year. “I was so excited, absolutely thrilled,” he says, recalling when he saw her in one of his designs. “And actually, very proud.”
Hollywood has also fallen for Erdem’s elegant prints, puffed sleeves and billowing skirts, with Keira Knightley, Gwyneth Paltrow and Thandie Newton choosing his signature dresses for the red carpet. And just the other day, Anne Hathaway stopped by for lunch with Erdem, which they ate on the pattern-cutting table at his studio in Bethnal Green, east London. “She was very cool – she has a great sense of humour,” he says.
But rather than rest on his laurels, the half-Turkish designer, who grew up in Canada, is challenging himself with his latest collection. “I’m exploring things that I haven’t done before, going out of my comfort zone,” he says. “I’m known for dresses – last season was very much about a dress silhouette – but this season is much broader. I’ve been feeling oddly nostalgic at the moment about my teenage years in Canada with my twin sister, and kind of thinking about the way that she dressed with her friends, that idea of youth in extreme conditions.”
While his designs are often bold, with their digital prints and sculptural shapes, he is not one to forgo comfort for headline space with his clothes. “When you put on one of our pieces, I want you to feel comfortable in it, empowered almost,” he explains. “It’s not really about owning the skirt of the season. I’ve never thought of myself in terms of whether I’m plain or wacky. I do what I do. In fashion, you can make an awful mistake of mixing up the importance of proportion and how someone is actually going to function in the garment. That’s an important element of what I do, and I think about that a lot. It’s good to understand your customer.”
Emily Zak, an executive fashion editor at Vogue, believes the secret to Erdem’s success is exactly that: knowing what women want. “Erdem operates with the knowledge that most women, regardless of age or background, want to look beautiful and feminine,” she says. “While many designers go for shock tactics, the intelligence of Erdem’s work is in his ability to make lace, rich colour and chiffon irresistible to women who would normally shy away. His clothes make you wonder how you ever got by without pretty pop florals or periwinkle cut-out lace.”
Emma Elwick, the magazine’s market editor, is also a fan, and chose Erdem to dress her on her wedding day. “Erdem’s pretty concoctions are somehow not sickly sweet, and his laser-sharp eye for colour has led to modern but ever-feminine prints that are gaining a cult fashion and political following,” she says. “I’ve enjoyed watching the progress of the romantic Erdem fille transform into a lady laden with exquisite details.”
So who is the Erdem woman: is she political wife or Hollywood starlet? “Well, she’s a lot of different women,” says the man himself. “Look at who we’ve dressed most recently – Sarah Brown today, an Olsen twin last week. Our woman is someone who appreciates something that’s quite special, and a woman who doesn’t wear an outfit in a forced or contrived way. They wear it and look as if they’ve always owned it.”
His tip for staying on trend during London Fashion Week and beyond is simple: “My advice to any woman, young or old, is to wear what’s natural to you. It’s always obvious when someone wears something that isn’t natural to them, and it almost looks as if the garment’s wearing them. Just be yourself. Yourself is a good look.”
Erdem, 31, was brought up in Lake St Louis, Montreal, by his Turkish father, a chemical engineer, and his English mother, a housewife.
“My mum was a real Anglophile,” he says. “She had a huge amount of nostalgia for anything English, and the only English TV we could get was things like Merchant Ivory films, so I had a very romantic vision of what Britain was like.”
After studying fashion in Canada, he moved to London in 2000, completing an internship at Vivienne Westwood before winning a British Council scholarship to do an MA in fashion at the Royal College of Art.
He graduated in 2003 and worked for Diane von Furstenberg in New York. Then in 2005, he won the prestigious Fashion Fringe award (the fashion world’s equivalent of The X Factor), showing his first collection in London the same year.
During the last London Fashion Week in September, Suzy Menkes, fashion editor of the International Herald Tribune, was heard remarking that Erdem was so good he should be showing in Milan, not London. So will he go the way of other British stars such as John Galliano and the late Alexander McQueen, who favoured showing their collections abroad? “No. I really love London, I love showing here, I studied here and it’s where I learned to do what I do. I feel like I belong here.”
Erdem says he was shocked when he received a phone call in his studio informing him that McQueen had died. “It was awful, so, so sad.”
Despite buoyant talk last week from McQueen’s backers that the label will continue after his death, Erdem believes McQueen is irreplaceable. “The brand is him. I really can’t imagine it going forward without him.”
London Fashion Week highlights
By Sonia Juttla
THE PARTY: The week’s hottest ticket is for the “Love Ball” hosted by the supermodel Natalia Vodianova, which will raise money for her children’s charity, the Naked Heart Foundation. It will be held at the Roundhouse in Camden, with the artist Dinos Chapman as creative director, Lily Allen performing, and Sienna Miller and Uma Thurman in the audience. £1,500 will bag you a ticket, too.
THE HANG-OUT: The Dean Street Townhouse, which brings Babington House’s Somerset cosiness to the centre of London. The fashion set should be found sipping vanilla-vodka-soaked Soho Martinis.
THE HIP DESIGNER: The Canadian-born, London-based designer Mark Fast is one to watch. Fast is famous for his sexy knits and controversial shows – last year, his stylist stormed out when he insisted on plus?sized models walking down the catwalk.
THE MUST-WEAR TREND: A pair of chunky clogs. Alexa Chung sports a Chanel pair (below) on the cover of this month’s Vogue; for a cheaper version, check out Swedish Hasbeens, available at Topshop.
THE FRONT ROW: US Vogue editor Anna Wintour is expected at Burberry, while the uber-chic editor-in-chief of French Vogue, Carine Roitfeld, is visiting London Fashion Week for the first time. Don’t worry if you can’t be there, though – this year, many designers will be streaming their shows live on the web.
source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/fashion/7280319/Rise-of-the-Erdem-woman.html
