Why Erdem Ditched His Signature Floral Prints

"Did you bring your bathing suit?" asks designer Erdem Moralioglu—who prefers to use just his first name in life, as in work—with an impish grin. "I thought we would conduct the interview in the pool!" It's a Monday morning in late May, and I'm meeting the bespectacled creative on the rooftop of the East London social club Shoreditch House. Having certain preconceptions about English weather, I did not pack a swimsuit. In fact, I'm feeling somewhat overdressed for this balmy 75-degree day, and for the crowd: bikini-clad girls lounging on deck chairs draped with red-and-white-striped towels. So instead, we retire to a shady spot where Erdem—who, perhaps heeding the London Underground PSAs to "remember to stay hydrated," is toting a massive bottle of Evian—proceeds to order himself a pair of teas: hot green and iced lemon. "I love stark contrasts," he announces. It's an appraisal of the scene, which seems plucked from sunny Los Angeles, but it's also a telling statement about the Erdem collection.

Half-English, half-Turkish, and raised in Montreal, Erdem completed his master's degree at the Royal College of Art. He founded his label in London in 2005, making him a contemporary of digital-print mavens Christopher Kane, Mary Katrantzou, Peter Pilotto, and Giles Deacon. But while his brethren in the new British establishment have built their brands over the past decade by pushing the envelope on wearable design via photo-realistic simian prints and lampshade dresses, Erdem's MO has been a highly saleable just-left-of-center take on propriety. As a boy, this history buff once enlisted his mother's aid in sewing a French Revolutionary costume complete with tricorne and lace stockings; today, he spends his free time ensconced in the Victoria and Albert Museum's textile archives. Erdem made his name cutting distorted florals (created by scanning such arcane ephemera as eighteenth-century wallpapers and messing them up in Photoshop) in classic silhouettes reminiscent of midcentury couture (from short, Empire-line skirts to high-necked gowns). There is a remarkable versatility to Erdem dresses, which work as well for Michelle Williams as they do for Michelle Obama—and for the women who shop the 160 stockists around the world that carry the line.

Last December, the designer scooped the Red Carpet Award at the British Fashion Awards, but the Hollywood circuit—that pot of gold most designers chase—is something he's ambivalent about. "It's a wonderful thing when you see your clothes out of the context of a show or a shoot, worn by these extraordinary women," Erdem says. "But red-carpet isn't something I really pursue." So that scarlet wall-to-wall he had installed in the Old Selfridges Hotel where he held his fall/winter 2014 show was not a ploy for more E! Live From the Red Carpet airtime? "No," he insists. "It was burgundy!" The visual reference, Erdem says, was the lurid floor coverings at the Overlook Hotel in The Shining. Not the most expected inspiration for a designer whose brand has often seemed the embodiment of arch femininity.

Indeed, there is something a bit bewitching, and a bit, well, un-Erdem-like about this season, which opened with a laser-cut bonded black velvet and black neoprene frock paired with pointy black Nicholas Kirkwood flats and, in addition to Kubrick's psychological horror film, referenced eerie seventeenth-century Velaázquez infantas and Romanovs on the lam. "The thing that I like most about Erdem's work is that there's an almost pristine sort of ethereal whimsy about it, but it's all grounded in and subverted by this darkness," says Mad Men actress Jessica Paré, a muse to Erdem and a fellow Montrealer, who grew up just across Lake Saint-Louis from the designer. "I think that that edge to the collection is really what makes it." The designer is happy to return the compliment: "Jessica plays this character who's really lovely, but then there's a flip side and a dark side to her as well—I find that fascinating."

Critics might note that there is not a single print in Erdem's current lineup—nor has there been one for the past two runway shows, the last of which, inspired by cross-dressing Eton boys, all but renounced color—and question the wisdom of eliminating one's most bankable signature. "It wasn't a conscious decision to ban print from the collection," Erdem says. "I think you explore different parts of your work, and things that are really familiar sometimes can feel unfamiliar, or your interests can shift." There's still plenty of digital stuff to shop, thanks to a broader commercial range not shown on the catwalk. But these days Erdem is most excited about other types of textile manipulation and yoking things together that are on the surface quite contradictory, like a humble shearling encrusted in jewels or a demure shift with little bows down the front, rendered in embossed croc. Flora appears as embroidery deliberately left unfinished on black jacquard, as though the dresses had been left out in the elements—a knowing nod to the fact that Erdem can also undo what it is that we expect him to do.

In case it's not already apparent, Erdem is not too concerned with fitting into a box. He traces this to a sense of what he terms "all-around outsidedness": He's lived in London since his early twenties, and although he carries a UK passport, he doesn't feel comfortable saying he's English. But nor does he like it when the press call him a Canadian designer, as they were wont to do when Kate Middleton sported a number of Erdem frocks on the royal tour of Canada. Erdem and his twin sister, Sara, are the only two family members born in that part of the commonwealth, where his father (now deceased) worked as a chemical engineer; they spent almost as much of their childhoods visiting relatives in both Europe and Asia as they did in North America. "People home in on something and are like, 'This is what you are,' " says Erdem. "It's like, well, maybe not. Not only are you that, but maybe you are more than that. I don't think it's great to just be one thing."

This article appeared in the August 2014 issue of ELLE magazine.

Related: NYC Street Style Rules

Designers