things

London’s many shrines to art, culture and history became homes away from home for Erdem Moralıoğlu while working on his spring/summer 2023 collection, through which he explores the world of art restoration. Below, five things to know about the show.

Erdem immersed himself in the world of art restoration

Erdem and his studio team met with restoration experts and conservations at the British Museum, Tate Britain, the National Gallery and the V&A while working on the spring/summer 2023 collection, which draws on the painstaking work involved in protecting cultural property. “We looked broadly at painting, historic costume and sculpture,” explains the designer, who adds that the restoration experts he met can spend 20 years working on an individual piece. “It became apparent to me that the forensic dedication applied to their subjects walks the line between care and obsession – this collection explores that space. I loved the idea of becoming the material that you are restoring.”
The venue was particularly apposite

Where better to present a collection inspired by the preservation of items of cultural importance than the British Museum? “To have the collection come alive amongst the colonnades of the museum feels so fitting,” says Erdem, who spent days in the conservation department at the landmark building. “I spent so long studying behind the scenes and working with the conservators.”
Erdem became obsessed with the obsessive nature of restoration

“I was thinking about obsession and the boundless pursuit of preservation,” he says of his approach to the collection. A series of photographs taken behind the scenes in the costume department at the V&A became a particularly rich source of inspiration. “Looking at the team restoring an 18th-century gown, I became obsessed with the complex under-structures built in order to save the garment,” he says. “There was something so interesting about the scientific, almost forensic intervention.”
The detail is forensic, but the mood is undone

The “knowledge, skill and obsession” that goes into restoring individual pieces of cultural importance informed the truly special gowns in the show’s finale, which were created using fragments of different fabrics. “The finale gowns are so important to me,” Erdem says. “They were really inspired by the tulle under-structures that we saw at the V&A… the idea of creating something in order to restore and save something else,” he adds. “To me there was something so interesting in the idea of the fragments, it was fascinating to cut up different garments and morph them together. There is a sense of the undone in this collection.”
It’s a season of solidarity in London

For his spring/summer 2023 collection, Carolina Herrera creative director Wes Gordon turned to his favorite childhood novel, The Secret Garden, for inspiration. Here, fashion critic Anders Christian Madsen breaks down the romantic details of note from the show.

The collection was based on a book

In the press notes for his Carolina Herrera show, Wes Gordon wrote: “And the secret garden bloomed and bloomed and every morning revealed new miracles.” The quote was from Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden, the designer’s favourite book growing up. Knowing Gordon’s love for romance, you could see why. He credited its whimsical depiction of nature as the inspiration for his spring/summer 2023 show.
The show took place in the Plaza Hotel

As the Upper East Side nature of the Carolina Herrera brand prescribes, Gordon chose the sacred halls of the Plaza Hotel as his venue. Herrera – who was on the front row – staged a show there herself in 1984, and true to Gordon’s approach to the legacy he’s been entrusted with, this collection was an exercise in looking to the future while remembering the past: giving the classic codes of Herrera a contemporary resonance.
It was effortless glamour

Granted, effortless glamour is essentially Herrera’s tagline, but it’s easier said than done. Demonstrating his skill for purified drama, Gordon opened the show with a voluminous striped blouse styled with a floral ball skirt, and not much else but a big pair of earrings. The minimal approach to grandeur continued in wrapped mini dresses that burst out in majestic trains at the back, and clean-cut gowns presented with naked necklines and wrists – all, of course, adorned in Gordon’s romantic flowers.
It wasn’t all ballgowns

In Gordon’s garden of pretty floral prints and volumes, a cinched suit emerged in all-black. It paved the way for tailored silhouettes like a little tweedy shorts suit and a little black jacket neatly sheathed in translucent fabric, as well as a black bustier styled with tapered black trousers, adding a certain realness to the ballroom glamour that underlined the brand’s appeal to a modern audience.
Gordon exercised his ateliers