For Erdem Fall 2021 RTW collection, the London-based designer looked back to his 2018 collaboration with The Royal Ballet, when he designed costumes for a new production.

We are in the wings, that liminal space between onstage and offstage, observing dancers criss-crossing over the mental and physical threshold to perform, moving from private to public and back again in a beat, a breath and the stretching or tensing of a limb. The seed was sown for Erdem following his collaboration with The Royal Ballet in 2018. He has worked here with Edward Watson, a principle dancer of The Royal Ballet, as movement director to capture this curious limbo state in the wings.

The collection explores these particular juxtapositions of performance and rest, age and expectation, formal costume and informal clothing, variously combined and intertwined. Moralioglu even cast four current and former Royal Ballet principal dancers — Christina Arestis, Elizabeth McGorian, Zenaida Yanowsky and Marguerite Porter — to walk among the models.

Moralioglu nailed this perennially cool juxtaposition, pairing ribbed knit leggings, shorts, arm-warmers and headbands with more formal tops, jackets or dresses; or having the straps of a leotard peeking out under a beautifully embroidered and/or printed A-line dress.  On the models’ feet were either actual point shoes or point shoe-inspired platforms.

Other ballet-inspired motifs include cream, feathered pieces recalling “Swan Lake,” voluminous tulle skirts, tailored suits a ballet mistress might wear and dresses with oversized jewel embellishments to be seen from the back of the auditorium.

Go backstage at the Fall 2021 RTW show with Erdem and Edward Watson.