ERDEM is no stranger to referencing past eras and historical silhouettes. In fact, that’s where designer Erdem Moralioglu has drawn inspiration since early in his fashion career.

This Spring-Summer collection followed this precedent and delivered something uniquely youthful for a collection centered around premodern art and the restoration of artistic artifacts to their full glory.

Held at The British Museum, this show saw 40-odd looks strut down the large colonnades in what seemed like a grand tribute to the late Queen Elizabeth. Especially so with the half-mast Union Jack glimmering proudly before the show

The inspiration for these looks actually started where they debuted. Moralioglu and his team spent time at The British Museum studying art restoration with experts.

Together they watched as 18th-century dresses were revived with complex tulle understructures, and a 15th-century oil painting was restored based on a 17th-century etching of the very piece.

To the ERDEM team, this restoration process was something they could apply to their artistic process. To them, restoration is both a visceral and a technical form of creativity that requires looking at the modern world and the world during the time a piece was produced.

This fusion of the modern eye and the frame of the past creates new life and new art in the restored pieces.

The very eye and frame that made the Spring-Summer collection uniquely youthful and historically influenced.

The collection contained gorgeous veils, precise skeletal corsetry, and timeless floral prints, all paired with the slightly rebellious loafer shoe for a touch of today’s youth.

Where the dresses and veils were extravagant, the footwear they were paired with offered glimpses of street style in the modern world.

Since today’s stylish youth, regardless of gender, are regularly seen sporting loafers and dress shoes with outfits not fit for formal occasions and sneakers with dresses and suits, it made sense to bend the rules of gender and formality to include this footwear with every historically-influenced dress on the runway.

The dresses also blended the modern eye and the tastes of the past with timeless silhouettes updated with bold prints and frayed hems to touch on the aspects of restoration central to the collection.

The show was closed out by three similar looks referencing timeless silhouettes from various times and places across the globe.

Ultimately echoing the theme of restoration as a tool to create new things and showing just how well ERDEM can bring the historical into something youthful.