Five Women, Five Legacies: When a Muse Isn’t Just a Symbol

In Erdem’s work, inspiration isn’t surface-deep. It’s not about recreating a look or referencing an era. Instead, his collections often start with a woman — real, complex, sometimes difficult — and explore how her life might be interpreted through fabric, weight, and structure. Embellishment, in that context, becomes more than a decorative layer. It becomes a form of communication.

This article looks at five women whose lives shaped Erdem’s designs — not the usual romantic muses, but figures with strong public identities and private contradictions. Some were performers, some reformers, some remembered more for their style than their power. But in each case, the result is more than a tribute: it’s a textile interpretation of character.

Maria Callas: Structure, Drama, and Restraint

Pre-Fall 2024 & Fall/Winter 2024

Maria Callas (1923–1977) was one of the most disciplined and theatrical opera singers of the 20th century. Erdem didn’t respond to her through costume, but through silhouette. The collections are defined by controlled volume — sculpted collars, sharp folds, and garments that sit away from the body, maintaining posture.

In Pre-Fall 2024, one of the few embellished pieces — a black midi dress with a soft pink sash — uses colour like a breath in a phrase. It wraps diagonally, interrupting the line rather than decorating it. In both seasons, the fabric choices (taffeta, duchess satin, wool) suggest weight and stillness, not movement. Even the floral prints feel deliberate, staged. It’s not romanticised. It’s disciplined — much like Callas herself.

Constance Spry: Floral Arrangement as Tension

Resort 2023

Constance Spry (1886–1960) was a self-taught British florist who disrupted formal flower arranging by mixing wild, broken, or unexpected stems with traditional displays. Erdem’s Resort 2023 collection doesn’t illustrate her directly — it adopts her approach. Placement becomes everything.

Florals are dense but off-centre. Some prints feel cropped or shadowed. There’s a tension between tailored garments and unruly decoration — like something trying to break through the fabric. A cotton shirt-dress is covered in blurred botanical shapes but held in by darts and a narrow belt. The balance is always slightly uneasy, and that’s the point. Spry wasn’t about pretty. She was about form.

Queen Elizabeth II: Veils, Garment Care, and Embodied Memory

Spring/Summer 2023

This collection came just after Queen Elizabeth II’s death in 2022, but it’s not mourningwear in the traditional sense. Instead, Erdem focused on what happens after a life ends: conservation, archiving, the invisible care behind textiles in museums.

Some looks are fully veiled in black tulle, like protective dust sheets. Embellishments are faint — tonal beading, soft appliqué, nothing overt. It’s as if the garments are mid-preservation. Even the way they move feels muted, like something kept still for documentation. The result is not sombre — it’s reverent. Less a tribute to her image than to what it takes to preserve one.

Edith Sitwell: Eccentric Style and Visual Control

Spring/Summer 2022

Edith Sitwell (1887–1964) wasn’t a fashion icon in the conventional sense—she was a poet who turned self-presentation into performance. Her love of elongated silhouettes, bold jewellery, and layered textiles wasn’t about elegance—it was about personal defiance.

For Spring 2022, Erdem drew from Sitwell’s visual language without romanticising it. Long lines dominate the collection—lean coats, fitted bodices, and floor-length skirts that fall straight, not fluid. The embellishments are minimal but strategic: tonal embroidery, carefully placed beading, and lace trims that frame rather than decorate.

There’s also structure in the restraint. Even florals appear faint or blurred, like something remembered rather than flaunted. The overall impression is one of control — style as self-protection. And that’s what makes this an effective reference to Sitwell. It’s not a costume. It’s a study in what it means to dress as an extension of thought.

Tina Modotti: Romance, Politics, and Layers of Identity

Spring/Summer 2020

Tina Modotti (1896–1942) was an Italian-born photographer, actress, and political activist whose life spanned silent film sets, revolutionary movements, and modernist photography circles in Mexico. For Spring 2020, Erdem focused on that tension between public beauty and personal conviction.

The collection blends traditional Mexican references—like fringed shawls and floral embroideries—with Victorian silhouettes and prim tailoring. Embellishment here carries weight: roses aren’t just floral motifs, they nod to Modotti’s layered cultural ties. Colour choices, including saturated tones inspired by Casa Luis Barragán, keep the garments grounded in a real place and time.

The results are complex and contradictory — just like Modotti’s life. Garments look romantic from a distance, but on closer inspection, they’re precise, charged, and often defiant. Not decorative. Intentional. it.

None of these collections are biographical. They’re not moodboards. They’re what happens when a designer takes a woman’s life — her discipline, her defiance, her structure — and works it into the logic of a garment. Embellishment, in Erdem’s hands, is never there to flatter. It’s there to press, to redirect, to reveal constraint.

If you’re someone who works with textiles, this matters. It’s easy to think of embroidery or print as something we apply at the end. These collections suggest something else: that what we stitch, where we place it, and why — can shape the entire meaning of a garment.