The walls of Bora Aksu’s East London studio are lined with cracked china dolls. “I collect them wherever I go,” the designer said during a preview of his fall collection. “But I’m only attracted to the ones that have been rejected. I save them, and I mend them.” The same could be said for Aksu’s approach to design, which exonerates historically misunderstood figures who challenged social norms and faced adversities as a result. The designer’s muses have included the American artist Eva Hesse, French mathematician Sophie Germain, Dutch society icon Mathilde Willink, and even his own late mother, Birsen, who resisted the role of housewife to become a doctor in 1960s Turkey.
This season’s collection was inspired by one of Birsen’s favorite movies: the 1955 historical drama Sissi, in which Romy Schneider plays a carefree Empress Elisabeth of Austria. Elisabeth, or Sissi, as she was nicknamed, remains a tourist magnet in that part of the world—though her legacy has been complicated by the truths of her own melancholia. Thrust into the spotlight as a 15-year-old bride—and later crowned Queen of Hungary—Elisabeth suffocated inside the role of monarch, only to be assassinated in 1898, just as she had begun to free herself from its binds. “I didn’t know how romanticized that film was until I visited her former home in Vienna,” said Aksu. “She was the Princess Diana of her time.” It was from here that the designer began to work through the idea of a false fairytale.
Asymmetric bridal gowns came with funereal trims of black pom-poms, crocheted epaulets, and love-heart appliqués, while his signature dresses—amassed from transparent layers of tulle, georgette, and vintage lace—imparted an unusual sense of claustrophobia as they passed through St. Paul’s Church in Covent Garden. So did the lace-caped polka-dot dresses and variegated pinstripe skirt suits that he said drew on the woozy distortion of Egon Schiele’s paintings. But it wasn’t all somber: a jacquard miniskirt set, a purple taffeta dress with laser-cut flowers at the hips, and a lace-trimmed magenta slip lifted the mood. “I needed to reveal Elisabeth’s inner self—the playful side that remained unseen,” Aksu said. “I want to give credit to the invisible strength inside these women.”
