For Pre-Autumn 2026, Erdem Moralioglu has found a muse who perfectly disrupts the prim-and-proper narrative the brand is so often associated with: Maud Wagner.
If the name doesn’t ring a bell, the visual certainly will. Wagner was America’s first known female tattoo artist, a circus aerialist and contortionist from the Belle Époque who not only performed but also turned her own body into a living gallery. At a time when women were laced into corsets and silenced, Wagner was covered neck-to-ankle in ink, trading the Victorian parlour for the tattoo parlour.
It is a delicious contrast for Erdem, a designer who usually deals in polite florals and historical romance. But here, he draws a sharp, clever parallel between the needle of the tattoo machine and the needle of the embroiderer.
For this collection, the decoration feels etched into it. The tattoo-like motifs appear as tiny emblems of memory and mark-making, featuring classic American traditional designs like swallows, nautical anchors, and blooming roses, rendered not in black ink, but in meticulous micro-beadwork or delicate chain-stitching.
To prevent the Belle Époque silhouette, with its typical high necks and subtle S-curve structure, from feeling heavy, Erdem looked to the photography of Jacques Henri Lartigue. Lartigue was renowned for capturing life in motion – early race cars, leaping figures and women braving the elements.
That sense of ‘wind-caught’ immediacy is stitched right into the seams. The collection features pleated ruffles that look like they’ve just been whipped up by a gust of wind and skirts that feel lifted mid-motion. The shapes shift fluidly from the structured to the elongated, echoing the social loosening of the era itself.
It’s a particularly poignant collection as it also marks a moment of introspection for the House, revisiting signatures from the past twenty years. But rather than a dusty retrospective, this feels like a remix. By channeling Wagner’s rebellious spirit and Lartigue’s kinetic energy, Erdem proves that while style might be ephemeral, the stories we write on our bodies – and our clothes – are permanent.
Discover the collection here.
photography. courtesy of Daniel Archer
words. Gennaro Costanzo
