Images from L-R:

Double-breasted coat in Prince of Wales check, worn with collaged cut-out bodysuit with crystal fragments. Worn with Flora Pochette bag in pale laurel and forest green leather fringe. High-neck dress with draped skirt in lilac floral-printed dégradé fringe jacquard. Cutout dress in pink crushed printed satin, with Barbette sticker appliqué and sus pended crystal embellishment. Knitted mini dress in lemon crushed ditsy jacquard with crystal embellishment, worn with pink satin petal bra. Worn with micro-mini Bloom bag in blush velvet.  Mini dress with draped skirt in crushed red satin with crystal flower embellishment 

For Spring Summer 2026, Erdem looks to the extraordinary figure of the American aerialist performer, Barbette. In 1920s Paris, Barbette ascended the trapeze as a woman and descended as a man. Born Vander Clyde Broadway in Texas (1899–1973), he transformed technical daring into an act of illusion: femininity was conjured, while the strength that kept him aloft remained almost invisible. A defining turn came when Barbette moved to Paris, where he found fame and became a sensation of the 1920s avant-garde. It was there that he became a muse to Jean Cocteau, who recognised in his act something beyond disguise. For Spring Summer 2027, Barbette’s suspended world becomes a study in transformation. The architecture of masculine and feminine forms is pushed and pulled.  A century later, Barbette remains urgently modern: a reminder that identity can be authored, beauty need not resolve, and gender may be less a fixed destination than a high wire – tense, luminous and alive with possibility 

Images from L-R:

Collaged cut-out bodysuit with crystal fragments. Worn with crystal-embellished East West Bloom bag in vermillion red textured satin. Hourglass tailored coat in black grain de poudre with dégradé petal-embroidered hem. Spliced tuxedo jacket with fringed scarf lapel in black grain de poudre, worn with over shirt and drawstring trousers in ivory crushed satin . Hourglass tuxedo jacket in black grain de poudre with draped bustle skirt in mixed ivory and black garland-embroidered tulle, worn with a white poplin shirt with flyaway collar. Collaged cutout dress in black and pink crushed satin with tiered skirt in black lace and suspended crystal flower embellishment. 

CREDITS

Styling: Marie-Amélie Sauvé
Casting: Ben Grimes
Production: OBO
Makeup: Lynsey Alexander for Merit
Hair: Eugene Souleiman for Kevin.Murphy
Skin: SkinCeuticals
Nails: Glossify
Venue: Roundhouse, London

Photography: Jason Lloyd Evans courtesy of Erdem