For Erdem Moralıoğlu’s latest collection, dazzling American child star Adele Astaire, who was the elder sister of Fred and married the son of the Duke of Devonshire, was the designer’s inspiration.
“She was Fred’s elder sister and the much more talented one. She was completely independent and then married into this very formal aristocratic family. It wasn’t [something that was done] then, but she even delayed her engagement so she could do one more show. She gave up her career and disappeared into Lismore Castle in Ireland.
I became obsessed with this girl and I kept coming back to the idea of her—such a showgirl—imagining her in her tweed and her glitzy star-spangled capes, traipsing the moors. Or, if she wore her flapper dresses with something belonging to her husband.”
The collection featured beautiful panne velvet bejeweled dresses, ’20s silver sequins (evoking Cecil Beaton’s shimmery portrait of Adele), and revised renditions of sensible grouse-moor estate tweed skirtsuits.
