Erdem wins at Beazley Designs of the Year

London Fashion Week designer Erdem has been honoured for his innovative Royal Ballet costumes at the 2018 Beazley Design of the Year, an annual award and exhibition run by London's Design Museum.

Womenswear designer Erdem Moralıoğlu was named as the fashion category winner for 2018 for the 24 costumes he designed for the Royal Ballet and Christopher Wheeldon's production of Corybantic.

Inspired by the Classical Greek themes of the piece, Erdem juxtaposed armour-like ribbon detailing with ethereal sheer tutus, while the champagne-coloured satin bodices and careful pleating evoked the 1950s era of Bernstein’s original score.

Erdem’s ballet costumes beat off tough competition from Burberry’s Rainbow Check collection, the final collection from Christopher Bailey, E Carter's costume designs for the film Black Panther, which drew inspiration from a rich array of African ceremonial dress, Nike’s team collection for the Nigeria national football team, which was designed to reflect the youth and dynamism of modern Nigeria and its diasporas, and Matty Bovan’s debut collection ‘Vigilamus’ inspired his late grandmother and her wardrobe of tweed suits.

Now in its 11th year, Beazley Designs of the Year celebrates innovative and impactful products, concepts and designers by showcasing world-class design projects from the last 12 months.

Other winners included Heatherwick Studio in the Architecture category, the designers of the shopping district in King’s Cross, Coal Drops Yard, were honoured for its disused grain silo on Cape Town’s V&A Waterfront, described as a ‘museum carved from concrete’, while Counter Investigations by Forensic Architecture was named best design of 2018.

The Beazley Designs of the Year exhibition is at the Design Museum in London, until January 6, 2019.

Image: courtesy of the Design Museum