To celebrate twenty years of his career, Erdem Moralıoğlu unveiled a collision of genres so extravagantly theatrical one might have sworn Madame de Pompadour was flirting with a punk in a post industrial club beneath a Bohemian crystal disco ball. In a world where the economy feels like a corset laced too tight, his devotion to couture borders on romantic heroism. London, ever eager to applaud its prodigies, watched him as one watches an alchemist turn anxiety into embroidery.

The autumn winter collection looked like a treasure chest overturned onto a clandestine dance floor: delirious patchworks, fringes shimmering like comet showers, giant bows perched on shoulders, ribbons stacked in abundance, crystals applied with the narrative density of a novel by Nicolas Gogol. Dresses worthy of the court of Louis XIV, yet ready to summon an Uber and vanish to an after party in Camden Town.

The collection was titled “Impossible Conversations.” And indeed, everything seemed to speak: Victorian ghosts, queer icons of the 1980s, baroque duchesses, insomniac poets. The models slipped between the narrow benches of Tate Britain with the air of women who had stayed up too late reading Oscar Wilde, then decided to go dancing in an abandoned railway tunnel.

In the audience, Keira Knightley, Helen Mirren and Glenn Close formed a triumvirate of cinematically inclined goddesses. Mirren and Close hurried backstage to kiss him, the way one congratulates a magician after a particularly exquisite feat of hand stitched sorcery. In this cathedral of patchwork and prestige, Erdem reminded us that fashion is an impossible yet necessary dialogue.

FM