The Erdem Fall 2022 RTW collection imagined the nightlives of a group of extraordinary women who embodied Berlin’s progressive cultural spirit in the 1930s: the painters Jeanne Mammen and Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler; the dancers Anita Berber and Valeska Gert; and photographer Madame d’Ora, whose work and being already played muse to the men’s collection Moralioglu launched last month and filtered onto his runway today.

“It was interesting, that time and period. I liked the idea that it was club, and maybe they were on their way out, like ghosts. It’s the end of the night and they’re trailing away…” he said backstage, where a smoke-filled black box lit up by dusty pillars of light, featuring a dramatic solo pianist, created an opulent and melancholy cabaret-like mood.

Every look was characterized by its own distinctive sense of degenerated glamour: unraveling like those jacquard dresses, tattered like the hammered ivory silk dress pulled down to the floor by lavish black beading, dominated like a grey skirt-suit invaded by gunmetal studs, fragile like the transparent black dress hand-sewn from tulle strips and embroidered with tiny pearls or deconstructed like the lace dresses slashed open by the sharpness of shiny, black sequined panels.

Go backstage at the Erdem Autumn Winter 2022 show.