INSIDE & OUT
The fashion designer Erdem Moralioglu turns photographer, stylist and storyteller for Bazaar Art, in his quest to illuminate the public and private sides of five of his creative heroines
IT’S AN EARLY SEPTEMBER MORNING AND SUNRAYS ARE CUTTING THROUGH THE MIST ABOVE Stepney Green’s cobbled streets. In a former Victorian schoolhouse, high up on the fifth floor, there’s a hive of creative endeavour. Gillian Wearing looks a picture of serenity as her hair is smoothed straight to the sounds of Kate Bush’s vocal gymnastics emanating from the speakers. Meanwhile, Erdem Moralioglu is chatting through a moodboard behind a rail of richly coloured clothes. On this particular occasion, the moodboard – which has references as varied as Irving Penn portraits, Renaissance paintings and James Baldwin images – is not the vision behind his latest fashion collection, but an overarching photographic concept.
Erdem the photographer may be less well-known than Erdem the designer, but he is nevertheless just as passionate. For this unique project, he is collaborating with Bazaar Art to create a visual essay featuring a quintet of British art-world icons: two Turner Prize winners – Wearing and Veronica Ryan – along with Jenny Saville (whose work is currently the highest-valued of any living female contemporary artist), the director of Tate Maria Balshaw and the acclaimed painter Kaye Donachie. This idea is to represent the artists in the state of being ‘done’ and ‘undone’: in the former, appearing as they would on a normal day – in paint-splattered trainers, perhaps; in the latter, composed and dramatic, clothed in sculptural Erdem regalia.
Moralioglu has long been fascinated by this dichotomy, which he wanted to dissect by visualising the artists’ inner and outer worlds. ‘What they all do is deeply personal,’ he explains. ‘There’s an aspect to their process that’s so introspective. But in allowing the world to see their work, there is an element of being exposed. This project meditates on the contrast between those two things.’
Art has been a constant presence in Moralioglu’s life, an interest fostered by his mother when he was young. ‘She shared the things that she enjoyed in life – any kind of visual language,’ he says. He took a postgraduate degree at the Royal College of Art in 2000 – ahigh point in the evolution of Britain’s contemporary-art scene marked by the opening of Tate Modern. ‘I had seen Wolfgang Tillmans’ exhibit at Ikon Gallery in 1999, and would go on to attend his lectures at the RCA,’ he remembers. ‘It was an exciting time.’ He now has a personal collection that includes work by Nan Goldin and Donachie, and he has curated a sale for Sotheby’s.
Narrative is the backbone of his designs; the discovery of a historical nugget might transmute into a full-blown season. He drew from stories of the Georgian
