Fine Art and Fashion: Erdem’s Evocative Autumn/Winter 2025-26 Collection in London

In attenuated blues, a portrait is depicted on a dress in Erdem's AW25 collection at the British Museum in London. 

Beneath the soaring glass roof of the British Museum's Great Court, Erdem Moralioglu unveiled a collection that felt like a whisper from the past: haunting, poetic, and deeply personal.  This was not just fashion but a meditation on memory, brought to life through collaboration with artist Kaye Donachie, writes Isabella Lancellotti. Photography by Jason Lloyd Evans

Column dress with portrait in

hand-embroidered organza

appliqué at the Erdem show

A HUSH fell over the audience, as the first model descended the grand, curving staircase that wraps around the British Museum's Reading Room, draped in a gown that bore the imprint of a portrait, a visage rendered in attenuated blues, the delicate brushstrokes dissolving into the fabric like a half-remembered dream. 

It was an image imbued with both nostalgia and abstraction, a poetic echo of memory. This moment, opening Erdem Moralioglu’s Autumn/Winter 2025 collection, set the tone for a show that blurred the lines between fashion and fine art, reality and recollection.

At the heart of the collection was Erdem’s collaboration with British artist Kaye Donachie, a painter known for her moody, atmospheric depictions of women: figures from history, memory, and imagination, rendered with an ethereal touch. 

Their partnership was rooted in personal history. Both artists studied at the Royal College of Art, but it wasn’t until much later that their creative paths intersected when Erdem commissioned Donachie to paint a portrait of his late mother. That experience, and the way Donachie conjures past lives through paint, became the catalyst for this evocative collection.

Together, designer and painter conjured garments that blurred the line between art and attire, history and imagination, each piece a canvas, each silhouette a brushstroke in a collection that lingered in the mind long after the final look had vanished into the museum’s shadows.

At the heart of the collection was Erdem’s collaboration with artist Kaye Donachie, a painter known for her moody, atmospheric depictions of women

Peplum jacket with exposed 

seams and a sculptured full 

skirt in tweed and sequins

The show explored the idea of clothing as a canvas both literally and metaphorically. Donachie’s art was transposed onto garments, not as direct reproductions but as emotional traces. Her portraits appeared on engineered prints, organza appliqué, and even hand-painted leather accessories. 

Some pieces played with the concept more subtly: a fitted bodice in bonded canvas with hand-painted detailing, a sculptural coat that carried the impression of an artwork layered within its folds. 

The collection’s silhouettes were a study in contrast: bold, architectural forms softened by diaphanous textures. Erdem’s signature feminine aesthetic remained intact, but with an added depth. Column dresses featured slashed necklines, a subtle nod to the fragmented nature of memory. Cocoon coats enveloped the body in textured cloqué and glossed sequins, while bell-shaped skirts and draped bodices suggested movement, as if caught mid-brushstroke.

The color palette felt at once subdued and charged with emotion. Deep, inky blues and ghostly greys recalled Donachie’s atmospheric paintings, while delicate antique pinks and muted apple greens brought warmth and romance. In some instances, abstract floral prints overlaid technical satins, resembling faded blooms pressed between the pages of an old book.

Accessories also played a crucial role in tying the collection to its artistic roots. The Bloom bag, one of Erdem’s signature styles, was reimagined in hand-painted iterations by Donachie herself. These small yet striking pieces reinforced the theme of wearable art, offering an intimate, tangible link between the painter’s brush and the wearer’s hands. 

The collection’s silhouettes were a study in contrast: bold, architectural forms softened by diaphanous textures

Soigne black cloque dress with

applique rose detail in white

While the collaboration with Donachie provided a conceptual backbone, the execution remained quintessentially Erdem. Tailoring was sharp, particularly in the flannel pinstripe suits and sculpted coats, which balanced the collection’s more fluid, painterly elements. Delicate lace and fil coupé jacquard added a sense of timeworn beauty, as if these garments had already lived past lives of their own.

Erdem has long been fascinated by historical narratives, often drawing from forgotten or overlooked figures. This season, however, the storytelling took on a more personal resonance. 

The references weren’t to a specific muse or time period but rather to the idea of memory itself: how it shifts, distorts, and lingers. The final looks reinforced this theme: skeletal corset dresses in technical organza, layered with the faint impressions of Donachie’s portraiture, suggested the ephemeral nature of both art and life.

By the time the last model disappeared up the staircase at the British Museum, the audience was left with an impression that extended beyond fabric and form. This was a collection that asked its viewers to consider the weight of history, the echoes of past lives, and the way fashion ~ like painting ~ can serve as both an archive and an act of imagination.

In an industry often driven by fleeting trends, Erdem’s Autumn/Winter 2025 collection stood as a meditation on permanence, on the enduring power of memory captured in fabric and pigment. It was, in Donachie’s words, a series of “footnotes in time,” rendered with the sensitivity of an artist and the precision of a couturier.

Scroll down to see more highlights from Erdem's AW25 collection in London

Trump’s Claims of Vast Presidential Powers Run Up Against Article Two of the Constitution and Exceed Previous Presidents’ Power Grabs

How much power does the president really have?

By Claire B. Wofford, Associate Professor of Political Science, College of Charleston

Those who wrote and wrangled over America’s Constitution might be troubled by the second presidency of Donald J. Trump.

While almost all modern presidents flex their muscles in the initial stages of their administration, the first weeks of the second Trump presidency have seen a rapid-fire, often dizzying array of executive actions that have sparked heated, even virulent, disputes among politicians, the media and citizens about how much power the president of the United States should have.

Historians differ about the framers’ precise intent regarding the executive branch. But the general consensus is twofold: First, domestic lawmaking power, including the critical “power of the purse,” would rest with Congress; second, the president would not be the equivalent of a king.

Fresh off the coercion of King George III, the framers were in no mood to recreate the British system. They debated extensively about whether the executive branch should be led by more than one person. A single chief executive was eventually favored in part because other institutional checks, including the selection of the president by the American people and Congress’ ability to impeach, seemed sufficient. And, of course, Congress would retain lawmaking powers.

Almost immediately, however, Congress began delegating some of that power to the presidency. As the nation grew and Congress found itself unable to manage the ensuing demands, it put more and more policymaking powers into the executive branch.

Congress frequently passed vaguely worded statutes and left important details largely to the president about how to manage, for instance, immigration or the environment. President-as-policymaker and the development of an immense federal bureaucracy that is now in the crosshairs of Trump and Elon Musk was one unintended result.

Whether the current American president has become a king, particularly after the sweeping grant of immunity in 2024 by the Supreme Court and the seeming acquiescence by Congress to Trump’s latest directives, remains up for debate.

In 2019, Trump said, “And then I have an Article 2, where I have the right to do whatever I want as President.”

I’m a constitutional law scholar, and I can comfortably respond: With all due respect, Mr. President, no. Article 2 does not grant the president unlimited power.

Here’s what the Constitution does say – and doesn’t say – about the power of the president.

An 1881 depiction of the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. Alfred Kappes and Frederick Juengling, New York Public Library Digital Collections

Exploiting imprecise language

The Constitution divides power among the three branches of the federal government – executive, legislative and judicial.

Article 1 specifies in great detail the structure and powers of Congress. In comparison, Article 2 is relatively short, outlining the powers of the executive branch, which now encompasses the president, his advisers and various departments and agencies.

There is no extensive laundry list of enumerated powers for the executive branch. Instead, there is a smattering. The president is given the power to “grant reprieves and pardons,” to “receive ambassadors,” and, with the consent of the Senate, “make treaties” and “appoint” various federal officials. The president is also the “Commander in Chief.”

Aside from the ability to veto legislation and “recommend” policies to Congress, the president was intended to serve primarily as an administrator of congressional statutes, not a policymaker.

It is other, much less precise language in Article 2 that undergirds much of what Trump claims he can do – and what opponents say he cannot.

Specifically, Section 1 states, “The Executive power shall be vested in a President,” and Section 3 requires the President to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.”

On their face, these “vesting” and “take care” clauses seem relatively innocuous, reflecting the framers’ view that the President would implement rather than create the nation’s public policy. Congress would have that prerogative, with the president generally confined to ensuring those laws were carried out appropriately.

Trump and his allies, however, have seized on these words as authorizing unlimited control over each of the 4 million employees of the executive branch and, through program changes and spending freezes, allowing him to exert significant policymaking power for the nation.

The administration has now surpassed what even the strongest proponents of presidential power may have once argued. Trump adviser Stephen Miller has said, “All executive power is vested in the one man elected by the whole nation. No unelected bureaucrat has any ‘independent’ authority.”

Yet the overriding goal of the framers at the Constitutional Convention was to avoid creating an American version of the British monarchy, with a single, unaccountable ruler in charge of national policymaking, free to implement his vision at will.

In the view of Trump’s critics, this is precisely what has occurred.

President Donald Trump signs an executive order on Feb. 14, 2025, at the White House. Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

Going around Congress

Trump is not the first president to use Article 2’s ambiguity to push the boundaries of executive authority.

Particularly since the end of World War II and the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration, presidents have seized upon the same phrases in the Constitution to put their particular political agendas into action.

Barack Obama, for instance, famously touted his “phone and pen” as a way to make policy when Congress refused.

The vehicle for most executive branch policymaking, including by Trump, has been the executive order. Executive orders are mentioned nowhere in the Constitution, but presidents have, since the very earliest days of the republic, issued these directives under their “executive” and “take care” power. Since the founding, there have been tens of thousands of executive orders, used by Democratic and Republican presidents alike.

Often, executive orders are relatively minor. They form commissions, set holiday schedules or brand an agency with a new seal. Dozens are signed unnoticed during every administration.

In other instances, they have sweeping and substantive effect.

Among those, Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation freed Southern slaves, Franklin Roosevelt placed Japanese Americans in internment camps, Harry S. Truman integrated the military, and Joe Biden forgave student loans. Trump has attempted to redefine birthright citizenship – a move which, for now, has been stopped by federal courts.

Because they have the force of law and remain in place until revoked by a subsequent president, executive orders have often faced legal challenges. Currently, there are more than 80 lawsuits challenging Trump’s executive orders for violating both federal law and the Constitution. Some orders, but not all, have been halted by lower courts.

But if many presidents have believed that Article 2 of the Constitution gives them the power to make policy via executive order, the nation’s highest court hasn’t always agreed.

Out of bounds?

Requests to the high court to rule on Trump’s executive orders are a virtual certainty.

Historically, the Supreme Court has struck down some executive orders as outside the scope of Article 2. As the court wrote in 1952, “In the framework of our Constitution, the President’s power to see that the laws are faithfully executed refutes the idea that he is to be a lawmaker.”

Whether Trump’s various directives are within his Article 2 authority or violate both the letter and spirit of the Constitution awaits determination, most likely by the U.S. Supreme Court. Much of the genius of that document is its often ambiguous language, letting the government adapt to a changing nation.

Yet that very ambiguity has allowed both sides of today’s political divide to claim that their version of executive power is faithful to the framers’ vision. As with the Civil War and the Civil Rights Movements, such a dispute could very well drive the U.S. to the breaking point.

Congress or the American people may eventually decide that Trump has gone too far. The next presidential election is years away, but Congress still retains the power of impeachment. More realistically, they could rein him in via legislation, as they did with President Richard Nixon.

For now, it is up to the judicial system to evaluate what the administration has done. Courts will need to use their constitutionally mandated authority to evaluate whether Trump has exceeded his. 

Claire B. Wofford, Associate Professor of Political Science, College of Charleston

London Fashion Week: Alice Temperley's New Napoleonic Autumn/Winter 2025 Collection

A soigne look from Alice Temperley's new AW25 collection was presented at London Fashion Week. Masthead cover picture by Elli Ioannou for DAM

Temperley London’s Autumn/Winter 2025 collection, La Victoire, draws inspiration from the Napoleonic era, blending historical references with the brand’s signature craftsmanship. Marking 25 years in the industry, Alice Temperley presents a collection that explores the tension between military-inspired tailoring and luxurious fabrics, writes Antonio Visconti 

Designer Alice Temperley (centre)

at the presentation of her new 

collection in London

ALICE TEMPERLEY'S new collection reflects a broader trend in fashion: using historical aesthetics as inspiration for contemporary design. Celebrating the brand’s 25th anniversary, the new range pays homage to the label's signature intricate detailing

"La Victoire has been a labour of love, and my whole team has worked so hard to make this happen," said Alice Temperley MBE. "It’s been a journey these last 25 years, and I can happily say about this collection that I want it all."

Since founding Temperley London at the turn of the millennium, Alice Temperley has built a brand known for its distinctive British bohemian spirit. The label's following includes The Duchess of Cambridge, Madonna, Beyoncé, and Penélope Cruz.  

The new collection's bespoke toile du jouy print evinces both the personal and historic inspirations, from Temperley’s Somerset heritage to her devotion to meticulous design. Sumptuous greens, dark blues, and deep reds form the palette, with embellishments such as hand-painted medal motifs, jacquard weaves, and embroidered insignias lending a regal air.

"La Victoire has been a labour of love, and my whole team has worked so hard to make this happen"

A beautifully tailored and draped

design from the AW25 collection

The structured silhouettes nod to military uniforms are softened by luxurious fabrics and contemporary cuts. 

Precision tailoring meets ornate detailing in the form of colour-blocked coats and fluid evening gowns that capture the elegance of historic court attire. Velvet jacquards, sculptural draping, and intricate embroidery add to the rich panoply. 

Temperley’s mastery of print is evident throughout, particularly in the refined jacquard iterations of the fashion house's signature T-logo, a reimagining of the branding. Meanwhile, delicate medal prints on silk satin bridge the past with the present.

For evening wear, the collection embraces a more dramatic mood. Opulent velvets, decorative detailing, and a sense of Gothic romance take centre stage. \

Leopard velvet jacquard adds a touch of glamour, reinforcing the collection’s balance between tailoring and fluidity.

Scroll down to see more highlights from the Temperley London AW25 collection