Culture
de Gournay x Erdem
Full bloom!
Image courtesy of: Tatler
Recently, the famed wallpaper designer, de Gournay teamed together with the revered fashion house, Erdem to create a dreamy collaboration named, deGournay x Erdem. Both are London-based brands and the combination of the two unique entities lies in the groundwork where “de Gournay’s eminence in the creation of Chinoiserie wallpapers achieves new levels of splendor with Erdem Moralioglu- a designer feted for a signature expression of halcyon romance- whose creation of a new hand painted design for wallpaper and as a fabric for a line of his elegant silhouettes deftly pairs the realms of fashion and interiors.”
The company’s first execution in kelly green.
Image courtesy of: Tatler
For over thirty years, de Gorunay has graced the walls of some of England’s grandest houses with their signature Chinoiserie designs. If it was a fashion house… it would certainly be haute couture. Each bespoke wallpaper is hand-painted either on silk or gold leaf paper. Every item is carefully curated with two distinct brushes, a nod to the thousand-year old technique of Chinoiserie.
Thus, when the two brands collaborated, the result was a depicted spring in full bloom with fauna and flora represented in deep, rich colors.
The collaboration premiered on March 2020.
Image courtesy of: Country and Town House
This exclusive collection features limited-edition wallpaper prints teamed with whimsical tiered dresses and dreamy shirts. The idea is that with whatever you wear, you are able to swiftly blend into your living room. The collection brings about visions of hollyhocks, hydrangeas, and chrysanthemums.
The fauna and flora is joined by sparrows, pheasants, and egrets perched on elegant branches. De gournay helped by adapting Erdem’s gorgeous garden motifs for its detailed and delicate Chinoiserie illustrations. They also altered the scale of the prints for the collection’s garments.
Erdem Moralioglu with Rachel and Hannah Cecil Gurney.
Image courtesy of: How to Spend It
The collection resulted in de Gornay’s first execution of wallpaper in colors of “Golden Yellow,” “Adam Grey,” and “Kelly Green.” The new colors will now join the brand’s iconic Chinoiserie collection.
Part of the reason the collaboration was just a natural fit is because Erdem has used Chinoiserie since his launch collection in 2005. Three separate capsules were formed with the March launch… a white background for Net-a-Porter, a navy background for Bergdorf Goodman, and a black background for Erdem’s South Audley Street boutique and e-site.
Moralioglu called the two-year long collaboration “a wonderful dance.” The fashion designer began his part of the process by working alongside de Gournay’s design director, Jemma Cave. Over several months, she produced a set of large-scale sketches onto which Moralioglu would make changes and scribe notes. Cecil Gurney said about Moralioglu, “A fashion designer has a different eye. We work mostly with decorators, who immediately think about the technical application of a design within an interior. Erdem’s focus, though, was on the aesthetic and texture, and how it feels.” Such words have a lot of validity, especially from Cecil who studied physics and trained as an accountant before switching to a “creative field”.
The birds appear full of life… darting through foliage, flying off, and craining their necks.
Image courtesy of: Living Etc.
Each panel of wallpaper takes roughly 120 hours to produce; and the 91.5cm x 150cm- 350cm pieces are all hand-painted in watercolor at de Gournay’s studio in Waxi, a city outside of Shanghai. Moralioglu said, “I create four collections a year by making quick, gestural line drawings. It’s a very fast process.” He quickly realized that there was a reason for de Gournay’s deliberate pace. With the slow process, the pair was able to feel their way through and let things naturally unfold. Tinkering around with the existing wallpaper designs on fabric allowed the clothing collection to organically emerge. Beauty abound!
