Erdem Moralıoğlu: 'Tourist tax is crazy. We have to make London more attractive for shoppers'

Erudite, charming, on time (early, actually), Erdem Moralıoğlu is something of a model specimen. If fashion designers can be caricatured with indecent haste, 47-year-old Erdem is anything but the cliché. Cultured, well-mannered and not in the least bit hysterical, you can imagine him as a perfect dinner party guest, the kind who is interested as well as interesting.

He is now a Londoner through and through. His first memory of the city is being hoisted up by his father on to the foot of a lion in Trafalgar Square. He was five and London seemed huge. “Everything began for me in London. My mum was from Birmingham, my father was from eastern Turkey, and I was born in Canada, but for me London is where everything sort of begins,” he says. “London is an amazing place to live, work and create. It’s special.”.

These days he shares his impeccable five-storey Bloomsbury townhouse with his husband, interior designer Philip Joseph, 45. Before moving here, they lived in Hackney for 15 years, but these days can walk to his store in Mayfair. They met two decades ago when they were both studying at the Royal College of Art. The pair are sophisticates of the first water; Erdem owns a complete volume of the Yellow Book, the magazine produced by Aubrey Beardsley from 1894 to 1897 (named after the yellow covers they would put on risqué French novels), and recent collections have been inspired by the work of novelist Radclyffe Hall and by Deborah Mitford. Even the plants in their house have artistic significance — including a Sparrmannia africana, “one of Lucian Freud’s favourites”. A photo collage by David Hockney sits above their bed. Erdem is a perfectionist, and his house is testament to this.

The designer completed a BA in fashion in Toronto and moved to London in 2000 for his MA at the Royal College, before launching his eponymous label in 2005. His super-chic clothes are worn by former US first lady Michelle Obama, fashion maven Alexa Chung, the actors Keira Knightley and Julianne Moore, and even Meghan Markle.

His most famous client is obviously the Princess of Wales. What does he think of Kensington Palace’s recent decision to not disclose what she’s wearing any more. Isn’t it a blow to the British fashion industry? He thinks not, and is fulsome in his support for the princess.

“I don’t think it’s a problem at all, as she has always been such a keen supporter of British fashion, and that support will always be there. She works for and represents extraordinary charities, and that’s what the focus should be on. If that’s the decision they’ve arrived at, then that’s fine with me. I respect it, and actually I think it makes perfect sense.”.

However, what she wears carries a lot of weight, and she is an internationally powerful person, so could it not be seen to be a negative response to British fashion? “No, I don’t, because I think her support for British fashion is not going to suddenly evaporate.”.

In the past 10 years, Erdem has been one of the designers who has helped change the perception of the British fashion industry. For many fashion observers, London is still the home of the wickedly zany, the wilfully bonkers and the decidedly incendiary, but Erdem — along with Jonathan Anderson, Mary Katrantzou and Christopher Kane — was one of those designers who decided early doors he wanted to compete with Milan and Paris, rather than waving a flag for British idiosyncrasy. His clothes can be worn by women of all ages, are built for the long run rather than the sprint, and always look ridiculously elegant.

London remains hugely important to him, which is why, although he has a showroom in Paris, he continues to show his collections here. “It’s my home, it’s where I live, it’s where I studied, where I trained, and I love it. London Fashion Week has its challenges, and its support from the international community is intermittent, but it’s really, really important.

“In fact, London Fashion Week is everything. It’s the platform that we all need. Once Burberry moved back to London it helped focus the international fashion community, and the British Fashion Council has been great in its support of foreign press, but it’s sometimes tough.”.

When I ask him what he thinks of the Labour government’s first six months, he says he wants them to look at the VAT issue (colloquially known as the Tourist Tax), something The London Standard has campaigned for since the rules were changed by Rishi Sunak when he was chancellor in 2020. The perk allowed tourists from outside the EU to claim back their VAT on goods bought in the UK.

The tourist tax is seen as putting London at a disadvantage to other European cities such as Paris and Milan in attracting wealthy visitors, with campaigners against it claiming it is costing the UK billions. The Government has been under pressure to reinstate duty free shopping, which has had an impact on London Fashion Week, making purchases 20 per cent more expensive for international shoppers.