Earlier this week, designer Erdem Moralioglu celebrated the 20th anniversary of his brand with an exuberant show at Tate Britain. Titled “The Imaginary Conversation,” the collection was less a retrospective (a term he shies away from) than a gathering of his many past and current muses, whom he placed in dialogue with one another.
For this Tuesday’s episode of The Run-Through, Moralioglu and Dame Kristin Scott Thomas, his friend of more than a decade—ever since he designed the look she wore to her investiture ceremony—come together for a freewheeling chat with Chioma.
The pair reminisce about that first meeting (at the time, Moralioglu’s studio was above a movie theater and “everything smelled of popcorn”), as well as the infamous nail polish incident of 2018 at the Met Gala (you can imagine how that story goes), and lots of other moments when Scott Thomas phoned her friend with a fashion emergency. She also takes advantage of her moment at the microphone to ask Erdem about his process of pattern-cutting.
As he reflects on the last 20 years, Moralioglu lingers on a sentiment he expressed in his recent self-titled book: that both everything has changed and nothing has changed at all. “I can look back at my graduate collection and at sketchbooks from when I was 21 and still see a connection between who I was then and who I am now,” he says. Listen to the full conversation up above.