Holed up in the modernist London home of British chef Ruthie Rogers, Kristin Scott Thomas is passing a plate of pasta pomodoro to Sheila Atim. Christopher Kane and Roksanda Ilinčić are holding court in another corner (possibly digesting the Fall 2026 shows), and Keira Knightley and Ambika Mod gaze in awe at The River Café owner’s exquisitely pared-back decor designed by her late husband, Richard Rogers. The common thread? They are all there to toast their friend Erdem Moralıoğlu on his brand’s 20th birthday.
The day prior, more of Erdem’s inner circle—Glenn Close, Dame Helen Mirren, Ruth Wilson, Ben Whishaw—sat front row to watch his London Fashion Week anniversary show. They were greeted with a letter. In it, Erdem detailed the “imaginary conversation” he began two decades ago between the historical women—poet Radclyffe Hall, biologist Marianne North, the Duchess of Devonshire—who inspire him each season. “What binds them is curiosity and a resistance to neat definition,” he says of his multi-faceted muses. “They do not always agree, and that is the point.”
“Their voices bring the past into the present, from which we build our future,” the message continues. “The dialogue goes on. This is not a show about nostalgia, but about continuity.” So yes, the Fall 2026 collection looks back on the extraordinary career of a man steadfast in his commitment to helming an independent British fashion house, but it’s not a wistful walk down memory lane. “It’s really about ripping things up and merging them together to turn them into something new,” says the softly spoken Canadian creative, who can’t quite fathom that it has been 20 years. When I probe him on what he’ll remember when looking back at the Fall 2026 collection in another 20 years, he quips: “I’ll think that it’s all a bit mad, but in a really beautiful way.”