Designer Erdem Moralioglu’s must-see exhibition in Derbyshire is a loving tribute to Debo Devonshire and her passion for Chatsworth, chickens and couture, says Kim Parker.
One of the first extraordinary items you encounter at the ‘Imaginary Conversations’ exhibition at Chatsworth House is a gleaming, tinsel-like twinset, crafted with silver lamé and sequins. Nearby, a fringed purple leather jacket shimmers with rhinestone starbursts — a tribute to Elvis Presley’s elaborate stage costumes — and another ensemble, a tailored tweed suit with a nipped-in silhouette, bears an artfully deconstructed hem ‘as if it’s been pecked by chickens,’ explains its British designer, Erdem Moralioglu.
These outfits formed part of Mr Moralioglu’s romantic spring/summer 2024 catwalk show, which was inspired by the late Dowager Duchess of Devonshire, Deborah (‘Debo’) Cavendish, and encapsulates much of her famously eclectic personality. The youngest of the Mitford sisters, Debo married Lord Andrew Cavendish, younger son of the 10th Duke of Devonshire, in 1941, and expected to live quietly as the wife of a country squire. But when Lord Andrew’s older brother was killed in the Second World War and his father unexpectedly died a few years later, at the age of 55, he inherited the dukedom, as well as Chatsworth, and Debo became a duchess.
After the war, the 126-room house and its grounds were in disrepair (‘a fabulous mess,’ she once recalled) and the Duchess had to cultivate strong entrepreneurial instincts to save the estate — she set up the farm shop, founded the charitable trust that supports Chatsworth’s considerable upkeep and collaborated with artists on creative projects to encourage visitors, a radical concept at the time, but one that her descendants continue to this day.
The Elvis slippers. Credit: Chatsworth House Trust
‘Debo was, in many ways, quite contradictory. She was this forward-facing duchess who represented the family in formal situations, but she was just as happy tending to her beloved chickens as she was hosting presidents, which I found so interesting,’ notes Mr Moralioglu. ‘She had bags by Hubert de Givenchy and wore beautiful bespoke dresses made by her dressmaker, Mary Feeney, but she also adored Elvis and wore slippers with his face printed on them. The spirit of that contrast is really wonderful to me.’
So wonderful, in fact, that the designer (a self-confessed history ‘nerd’) not only devoted his entire fashion collection to the duchess, but has displayed it alongside a curated selection of her own belongings (such as letters, objects and accessories) for ‘Imaginary Conversations’, reflecting her character, as well as his own creative processes. ‘Creating the collection became this imaginary conversation between someone I’ve never met as a muse and myself. With this exhibition, what you see is not an exact portrait of her, but something through a lens,’ he says.
‘The diversity of Debo’s interests has always amused people,’ agrees Laura Cavendish, Countess of Burlington, whose parents-in-law are the current Duke and Duchess. ‘It’s hard to know exactly what captures the imagination, but I’d hazard a guess that glamour, wit and unpredictability have something to do with it.’ Although the late Duchess had previously inspired many other fashion designers, including Alessandro Michele during his tenure at Gucci, Mr Moralioglu is the first to have been granted access to her personal archive since her death in 2014.
Deborah Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire, pictured in her study at Chatsworth House, Derbyshire in 1976. Credit: Brian Randle/Mirrorpix via Getty images
His friendship with Lady Burlington stretches back almost 20 years, to when she worked as a fashion buyer and purchased his debut collection for The Shop at Bluebird in London. It was thanks to Lady Burlington that he was able to explore more than 1,000 items in the Chatsworth archives in 2017, when researching Adele Astaire (who married Charles Cavendish, son of the 9th Duke of Devonshire) for a fall/winter collection. ‘It was then that I really discovered Debo and this idea of doing a collection based on her was planted in my mind,’ he reveals. ‘I always knew I would come back to her.
Of the many things that drew him back to her, her attitude of ‘make do and mend’ was one of the most alluring. ‘I loved that she held on to things, whether it was carpets or furniture or doors or fabrics, and tried to use them again wherever possible,’ he says. Indeed, the theme of circularity runs throughout the exhibition, which takes place in Chatsworth’s Regency Guest Bedrooms and showcases Erdem dresses and billowy waxed jackets against swags of the archival fabrics that inspired them, their floral prints echoing each other perfectly.
One gown has even been fashioned from a set of chintz curtains that had been ‘retired’ by Lady Burlington from Lismore Castle (the family estate in Ireland). ‘They were light shattered and destined for the bin, but Erdem persuaded me to send them to him,’ she says. Mr Moralioglu repurposed the fabric into a one-shouldered dress and invited Debo’s great-granddaughter (the daughter of his late friend, Stella Tennant) Cecily Lasnet, who was interning in his workshop, to embroider flowers over the top, in an ‘extraordinarily touching’ gesture.
Erdem’s atelier, re-created in the Queen of Scots’ Dressing Room. Credit: Chatsworth House Trust
Other pieces are displayed with their design references taken from the late Duchess’s wardrobe. In the Alcove Bedroom, a glass vitrine holds a shimmering array of Victorian and Edwardian insect brooches, anniversary gifts from her husband, around a Cecil Beaton photograph of the Duchess in an off-the-shoulder gown — both of which inspired the dark velvet dress on an adjacent mannequin, with its elegant shoulder ties and sprinkling of crystal bugs.
Next door, in the Queen of Scots’ Bedroom (where Mary Queen of Scots slept during her house arrest at Chatsworth in the 16th century), a dress with an embellished bodice and sheer, lingerie-like skirt is juxtaposed against the underpinnings of a haute couture dress from the 1950s created for the Duchess by Jean Patou. ‘For me, these two dresses summarise the idea behind the whole collection. I loved the idea of taking an undergarment that had been fitted specifically to Debo’s body and was something that no one was ever supposed to see, and bringing it to the outside,’ says Mr Moralioglu. ‘This pairing epitomises the conversation between the past and the present, between Debo and myself and between Chatsworth and its legacy.’
For Lady Burlington, a notable part of the exhibition is in the Queen of Scots’ Dressing Room. Here, Mr Moralioglu has re-created his own atelier — everything from his mood boards and sketches for the spring/summer collection to the cotton toiles employed by his cutting team, and the model fitting photographs from his spectacular catwalk show, held in September 2023 at the British Museum. ‘My hope is that those who see it learn how a designer works from an archive and the time and effort that goes into research, pattern making and print design. Artists and designers often have new and interesting ways of seeing the world and Chatsworth has always been a place that was experimental. William [Lord Burlington] and I have a responsibility to conserve and protect the historical aspects of Chatsworth, but also to embrace new projects and welcome an increasingly diverse audience,’ she says. Somewhere, one suspects, Debo herself is nodding in agreement.
‘Erdem: Imaginary Conversations’ is at Chatsworth House, Derbyshire, until October 20
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