Mary Katranzou on staging her S/S20 show at Temple of Poseidon

Mary Katranzou

On the 3 October, Athens-born, London-based designer Mary Katrantzou will present her SS20 collection where no other designer has shown before: the Temple of Poseidon. In fact, it’s the first time this sacrosanct emblem of the Golden Age of Athens – widely considered the cradle of Western civilization – will be used for any private event.

Katrantzou, whose designs are favoured by the likes of Lupita Nyong'o, Michelle Obama and Beyoncé, describes the occasion as a homecoming. “I had wanted to do something in Greece for a long time and following our 10th anniversary last year it seemed like the right moment,” the 36-year-old tells Vogue. But she wasn’t the only one reaching a major milestone. Philanthropist Marianna Vardinoyannis, who founded the Association of Friends of Children with cancer (ELPIDA) in 1990, before establishing Greece’s first Bone Marrow Transplant Unit and Oncology Children's Hospital, was looking to mark her organisation’s 30th year, and so reached out to Katrantzou to join forces.

“I think Marianna probably thought I’d want to do an intimate show. When I told her and the committee I wanted to do something dedicated to Greece and my dream location would be the Temple of Poseidon, they fell silent,” Katrantzou says, laughing. Their silence was justified: the regulations of Greece’s Central Archaeological Council (KAS), an advisory board that protects ancient monuments and archaeological sites, which rejected a request from Gucci to host a fashion show at the Acropolis in 2017, are famously stringent. “It’s very difficult because it needs to be approved by both the Ministry of Culture and KAS and that whole process took over six months,” Katrantzou continues. “In July we achieved what, by this time, I thought was impossible and got the yes. It was so unexpected I cried and it’s the first time in the 10 years I’ve worked in the fashion industry that I’ve had that reaction.”

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