ERDEM Pre-Spring 2025 collection just launched

For ERDEM Pre-Spring / Resort 2025, Erdem has taken inspiration from the author Radclyffe Hall, during the publication in the 1920s of her controversial (today celebrated) book: The Well of Loneliness. Hall lived openly as a gay woman with her partner Una Troubridge. She frequently wore men’s clothes, latterly renaming herself John. Erdem’s collection plays with the tension between masculine and feminine styles and silhouettes of the 1920s, exploring power and vulnerability simultaneously.

There are moments of extreme masculinity and heightened femininity from one look to the next. The combination of structured tailoring and loose drapery makes for an interplay of looks that trace a line between menswear and womenswear. Some looks are bluntly masculine; others are riotously feminine – the question of who might wear what is a celebration of Hall’s own empowered fluidity.

The 1920s are evident in pleated skirts and drop-waisted dresses. Elsewhere hand-drapery is used to evoke the decadent louche-ness of the era. Asymmetry introduces an edge of modernity. The carnation appears repeatedly as a queer motif in a variety of scales, variously embroidered, crocheted or printed.

Details of ERDEM Pre-Spring / Resort 2025: Oversized, tailored blazers are worn over pleated kilts and shrunken knitted jumpers are combined with long draped silk skirts. The contrast of scale and structure suggests a free-spirited approach, not fearful of playing with established codes of dressing. A floating yarn jacquard coat has an organic quality, while oversized, floral-embroidered denim coats and bomber jackets would sit comfortably on any shoulder.

There are echoes of utilitarian and militaristic influences of the era, evident in trench coats, belted blazers, white shirts and tailored skirts in khaki. Autochromatic photographic printed dresses with scarf details have an ethereal dreamlike quality. Elsewhere, rugged, nubby knitwear has a warmth and familiarity.

Across ERDEM Pre-Spring / Resort 2025 collection there is a push and pull between scale and silhouette, tailoring and drapery, obscure and familiar, practical and poetic, masculine and feminine. A play with contrast lends the season a strength and modernity – a fitting homage to Hall herself.