The moody backstage setting in Erdem Moralioglu’s resort lookbook hints at the life of Barbette, the high-wire and trapeze music hall performer who riveted audiences in Paris in the 1920s and ’30s. Born in Texas, Vander Clyde Broadway (Barbette’s given name) cultivated an act which suspended gender conformity in ways that captivated artists and intellectuals of his time. “I came across an amazing essay by Jean Cocteau in the 1930s called the Numero Barbette,” Moralioglu related. “He wrote on this idea of gender and the third sex, and this kind of extraordinary bird-like creature. He was actually male but had started out in Texas performing as Barbette in a circus as one-half of the Alfaretta Sisters, stepping in as a female because one of the sisters died in a trapeze accident.”
Man Ray photographed Barbette for Cocteau, images of a beauty that resonated with Moralioglu in ways that clearly call to his eye for a romantic period figure whose story has something covertly relevant to say about today. “This idea of gender and genderlessness became very interesting,” he said. “This idea of what it means to be one’s born gender and given gender, and what someone becomes. And maybe what’s interesting about this case is the space in between.”
Highly fashion-relevant, too. Abstractions of 1920s and ’30s dressing are flitting through many collections right now, and this is truly Moralioglu’s playground. Drop-waist pannier dresses with skirts in exuberantly irregular cloqué or transparently caged in lace, liquid lingerie-slips draped with random pinch-points, and antiqued materials like hammered duchesse satin and crystal embroidery flow effortlessly through this collection. He’s expert at making highly elaborate pieces that are nevertheless easy to carry off for a multitude of occasions.
Moralioglu said he’d thought of pairing jeans with a couple of chopped-off corseted high-wire performer tops to hint at the contrast between male and female, but then again, it’s also a brilliant, simple, suggestion for a going-out look. There’s more to come. As is always this designer’s practice, his pre-collections are a limbering up for the content of his next show. There’ll be lots more to hear about Barbette in September.