I’ve always been fascinated by the way women look. As a young boy, I drew pictures of women – never men. I had a teacher in first grade who would wear long skirts and I could sometimes catch a glimpse of her slips poking out of the bottom of them. I was intrigued by the way women walked, how they sat, the secrets they might have. I’m sure you could have a Freudian field day with that.
My parents met in Geneva. My dad was Turkish, my mother was from Birmingham and they ended up settling in Montreal, so I grew up visiting grandmothers in foreign countries. I remember thinking they couldn’t be further apart culturally, except they both drank tea: one from a mug and one from a glass with sugar cubes on the side. Tea was a universal grandmother thing.
It’s regrettable we aren’t living in a time of openness. I am a product of immigration; not only that, but I’ve moved and settled in London. When we start becoming paranoid and not including certain groups of people based on where they’re from, it’s dangerous – not just for society but creativity.
One of the greatest satisfactions I get from my job is creating collections that work on lots of different bodies. It’s so important to me that people can actually wear my clothes: that they fit. There’s a vilification of the fashion industry when it comes to size, but actually I think it’s an overriding issue that has infiltrated into lots of the images we see.
I came perilously close to death as a child, stepping on to a frozen lake that cracked beneath me. But in reality I’ve probably come much closer at a time I’ve never been aware of. The likelihood is that I’ve been writing an email while crossing the road and was narrowly missed by a taxi.
I’ve always thought that I’m a little bit tense-looking. But really, when I look at myself I see that I’m slowly morphing into my father.
It’s good to be a uniform dresser. I really am an incredibly boring person when it comes to what I wear: I like a T-shirt, navy blue trousers and some Stan Smith trainers. I have a collection of Stan Smiths in various states of decay lined up beside my desk.
The thing with loss is that it never completely fades. I lost both my parents when I was quite young, in my 20s, and though you heal, there’s always a scar.
Being a twin has had a huge effect on my life. From the day you’re born, you do everything with another person: go to school, ride a bike for the first time, learn to swim. My sister and I are very close.
I’m always whistling. In the office, at home. People know I’m coming.
Right now I’m feeling very happy. My partner and I are renovating, so home is a building site full of dust and boxes. We don’t have a kitchen sink and we’re eating takeaways on a makeshift bed, but the other day I woke up among the chaos and thought: “You know, life feels pretty good.”
Erdem is a headline speaker at Bath in Fashion 2016, from 18-24 April, where he will be in conversation with Tim Blanks (bathinfashion.co.uk)
