– Stephanie LaCava

Erdem Moralioglu, best known as simply Erdem, is in Paris and he’s not planning a capsule couture collection.  The London based ready-to-wear designer has come to attend a special cocktail at the American Embassy (congratulations to Anna Wintour on the Legion d’Honneur) and then Natalia Vodionova’s Love Ball this same evening.  He plans to wear a midnight blue double breasted suit he had made on Savile Row at Norton & Sons, lined with his own signature print. “It looks like I left my jacket hanging on an oil painting,” he says.  In a few minutes he’s going out in the Marais to find a pocket square and blossom for his lapel (he loves camellias and peonies).  Aside from the evening’s festivities, Erdem is looking forward to seeing the Madame Gres and Anish Kapoor exhibits, as well as a meal at Chez Paul.  He’s already had his omelette at Rose Bakery.  The Marais is Erdem’s preferred neighborhood.  He loves Comptoir de l’Image and the Les Archive de la Presses, filled with vintage photos, books and magazines.  It was the lovely writer Lynn Yaeger who introduced him to another obsession further afield, Le marche aux Puces de Vanves where he purchased the book, Goodbye Picasso.  The story of the painter’s many wives influenced his last collection.

At the moment, we’re both sitting on rainbow colored cushions in a room with a wall of citrus Mondrian-like panels and kaleidoscopic printed wall paper.  This is the Christian Lacroix designed Hotel du Petit Moulin, with its mirrored boulangerie facade and madcap interiors.  ”It’s like living in one of his sketchbooks,” says Erdem, his own room an explosion of toile de jouy.  This is his first time in the hotel.  ”I always loved Lacroix couture,” he says.  ”Couture is this wonderful, magical thing created by hand.  Fashion in its highest form.  The reason we do what we do.”

- Stephanie LaCava