Designer interviews

Erdem Interviewed 2012

Erdem:

When I start a collection, I always put together a kind of a mood board, an idea of thoughts, and get all of the research in one place. So this is my mood board for Spring/Summer 2011. You can see quite a lot of the images I took while I was at Lythe House, which is the storage unit for the V&A where they keep quite a lot of their archival images and costumes.

What I was really interested in was Leon Bakst who designed quite a few of the costumes for the Ballet Russe. You can see these wonderful, almost Greek-like, very draped garments. But also he did quite a lot of quite structured garments. You can see this – this is something that Nijinsky wore, shown in the exhibit at V&A.

So I was very interested in that balance between something that was very structured and something that was very soft. But I was also given a preview of the exhibit before it actually went into the museum, and I went into this room and it was just filled with these mannequins that had the Ballet Russe costumes underneath all this cotton draping. And I just thought there was something so beautiful about that idea that there were all these different shapes of the costumes but they were all completely white, and then you open them up and there is this wonderful colour. I felt like that to me was kind of inspiring, so maybe it’s that idea of the collection starting off as something very white, and this wonderful explosion of colour. But I also loved this harlequin sort of patchwork, and I thought that was wonderful. 

A lot of the prints are based on this idea of Ballet Russe sets, and taking digital pictures of weird images from actual backdrops and then manipulating them. So I was very much inspired by the Ballet Russe.

These drawings are actually the collection. What I do before I show a collection is literally draw it out. So this is the running order in my mind of how I hope the collection will look, and you can see this idea of soft drapeyness mixed in with these very graphic shapes that are very…kind of…graphic, for want of a better word!

You can also see the bun. Being inspired by ballet, I love the idea of creating this very nipped-in bun. Whether or not we’re actually going to go with the bun, we’ll see after today’s hair test. I have two ideas: one is using this very slick back bun that’s kind of knotted, and then the other is taking two plaits and having them wrap around the head, so I’m going to talk to Marc about that in a few minutes. Then also we’re going to be using this hair jewellery, which is a new thing for us, and we’re going to be bringing in that whole kind of Russian inspiration…thinking about jewels – rich and really beautiful. But we really want it to be, you know, really up and youthful and young, so hopefully Marc will help us achieve that, which I’m sure he will.

So I just wanted to walk you through where we’re going to have the show this season. We’re doing something quite different this season. We’re actually going to have the show outside, so we’re going to build the structure to cover this green area that we’ve taken over, by Tottenham Court Road. We are going to be building a geodesic dome with open sides, and we’ve never had a show outside so that’s going to be quite a new experience. We are really looking forward to it.

Interviewer:

Is it just the one dome?

Erdem:

There are going to be two domes. So there will be a dome for the hair and make-up and a dome for the actual catwalk show, and there willl be a tunnel connecting the two.

Interviewer:

So are there any problems with doing it outdoors?

Erdem:

Yeah, I mean there are issues like running water – there’s not going to be running water. And also power’s not a problem – there will be power brought in.

Interviewer:

So you’re going to be hoping for good weather on the day!

Erdem:

Yeah exactly!

Interviewer:

Excellent, fingers crossed.