LONDON, ??????? 14, 2006 – Erdem Moralioglu is the half-Turkish, half-English, Canada-raised designer who won last year's British Fashion Fringe competition. As if that isn't complicated enough to remember, focus on the fact that after graduating from London's Royal College of Art, he worked for Diane von Furstenberg.
DVF, or at least her example, is what Moralioglu should be focusing on, too. His competition collection won on the strength of its soft printed dresses—not, in this case, wraps, but long, accordion-pleated floor-sweepers. That whimsical, romantic bent comes, he says, from a childhood spent watching Merchant Ivory films on PBS; and if he's going to make a mark, it will be as a dressmaker. Unfortunately, he obscured that underlying potential in his debut show by trying too hard to prove he can do tailoring, and by overworking a dandyish George Sand-meets-Napoleon theme. If he stops fretting about historical narrative and gives in to his soft side—the one that came up with a pretty cream silk dress and a striped floor-length gown with an antique lace ruff—it'll be easier to clarify what he has to offer.
