Erdem’s first look stated all of it: A woman with a barely trance-like expression on her pale face was treading her method alongside a pink earth pathway, prettily wearing a fragile Victoriana yoked costume of pale grey chiffon, strewn with embroidered pink and white flowers, which gave the impression to be coming aside on the shoulders. To date, so enchanting—however what the designer mentioned about his inspiration will make you return and take an extended re-evaluation: “It was about prairie insanity,” he defined backstage. “In 1862, Abraham Lincoln handed the Homestead Act, which gave single girls and widows the appropriate to their very own plots of land within the West, so long as they stayed there for 5 years. So there have been all these ladies coming from their properties in Europe, bringing their garments and the remnants of their lives in Norway and Germany and locations like that—and so they began to endure from agoraphobia and all types of psychological diseases.” A fast Wikipedia verify additionally exhibits that suicide was not unusual amongst these lonely girls. Might that black velvet ribbon at her neck, knotted and displaced to the aspect, begin to look a bit of completely different in that mild?
Erdem’s productions have taken on an nearly cinematic high quality lately, typically hinting on the backstories of imaginary women and girls who’ve fallen on arduous instances or traveled removed from their safe houses. Final season, he positioned his present in a down-at-the-heels ’50s condominium set belonging to an heiress whose hopes in life had been unraveling; earlier than that, it was a tropical greenhouse for a story a couple of Victorian girl botanist. A part of this, he all the time says, comes from spending his boyhood obsessively watching Service provider Ivory movies. He’s a romantic who can solely design as soon as he “is aware of” the character he’s dressing.
The prairie women, with their extraordinary wardrobes of ankle-length flounced attire product of fantastically wrought lace, crochet, and embroidery materials, are his sequel. They arrived by railroad—pushed alongside on an precise prepare observe in a former freight yard within the hinterland of King’s Cross station, with just a few sticks of furnishings to their names, after which proceeded to make their lengthy, melancholy stroll to a crackly soundtrack of Emily Dickinson’s poetry.
Effectively, put it one other manner: Erdem could also be sensible at analysis and atmospherics, however in the actual world he additionally is aware of the minds of the ladies he truly attire. Subsequent summer season, they’re mainly going to be in prettiness heaven.
