Greek Legend: Mary Katranzou hosts her S/S20 show at Temple of Poseidon

Mary Katranzou S/S20

It’s easy during the seasonal fashion week shows, to feel utterly disconnected from nature, shuttled from show space to show space in enclosed cars, glimpsing esteemed cultural sites, like the Eiffel Tower in Paris or the Duomo in Milan through a small window. But last night, guests at Mary Katrantzou’s S/S 2020 show took in the startlingly azure blue hues of the Aegean Sea from 200 ft above sea level, perched amongst the 16 Doric columns that form the Temple of Poseidon, which since 444 BC has stood majestically on top of Cape Sounion, in Greece.

Here, instead of women in ancient togas, making offerings to Poseidon’s tempestuous trident, and his power to stir up storms and shatter fleets of ships, models walked beneath the temple’s colonnades in astonishingly imaginative and painstakingly crafted creations, barely fit for mere mortals. Greece born Katrantzou is the first designer to have access to the sacred space – one of the landmark monuments of the Golden Age of Athens – a period which also heralded democracy, the Western philosophy of Socrates and the dramatic poetry of Sophocles. Katrantzou’s moment of modern magnificence celebrated her home city, and also in a nod to the possibility of the future, the 30th anniversary of Elpida Association of Friends of Children with Cancer.

Pieces had a couture-level of craftsmanship, which referenced Athens’ Golden Age. A caped dress was hand beaded with lines of numbers, in an allusion to Archimedes’ Pi, a delicately fringed gown was embellished with Aristotle’s tenet ‘Everything happens for a reason’, and dresses were festooned with beaded constellations of the night sky, fantasy world maps, ruffled fronds of silk, 3D florals and swirls of feathers. Delphic pleats cascaded across shoulders, and silhouettes came in straight columns, as layered lampshades or as floating orbs.

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Mary Katranzou's Ode to Greece, S/S20

'astrikos' gown, Mary Katranzou S/S20

Fashion often runs late, but two and a half thousand years is an awfully long time to wait for a show to begin. But it took that long for one to be staged in (or rather around) the Hellenic Temple of Poseidon, jutting over the Aegean sea at Cape Sounion, the southernmost tip of the Attica peninsula of Greece and built in 444–440 BC. It was the feted London-based Greek designer Mary Katrantzou who inaugurated the space with a show to close the Spring/Summer 2020 season – although, really, it was a show outside of fashion and perhaps even time, geared especially to the location, to her own heritage and the culture of her birthplace. That said, there’s an odd connection between this temple and London – following its excavation in the early 20th century, a column wound up in the British Museum, a few miles from where Katrantzou now lives and works.

Rather than aping ancient Greek chitons or sinuous drapery, Katrantzou pursued her own path. The collection was themed around not the idea of Ancient Greece, but the ideas – its place as a crucible of culture, with threads running through nearly every aspect of modern life. Trace everything back – philosophy, architecture, even the mathematics that are the basis for our hyper high-tech society – and you wind up back here. All roads may lead to Rome, but keep following them and you’ll wind up in Greece.

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Mary Katranzou stages fashion show at Temple of Poseidon

Last night, Mary Katrantzou staged a show at the Temple of Poseidon in Greece, becoming the first designer to do so. While other brands have tried and failed to stage catwalk events inside the ancient Greek monument, Katrantzou’s homecoming marks the end of her brand’s 10-year anniversary celebrations – and what a setting it was.

Just over an hour away from Athens, the Temple of Poseidon sits atop the craggy cliff of Cape Sounion, towering 70 metres above the sea. It’s a majestic location that boasts some of Greece’s most beautiful sunset vistas, and is fiercely protected by the Greek authorities. Katrantzou knew gaining their approval wouldn’t be an easy process, but for her, there was never another choice.

“Everyone advised against it because we were made aware that there had been a few applications for that monument that were vetoed by the archaeological committee and the government,” she told us last month. “Everyone knew it was difficult, but we felt our efforts would be worthwhile. I wanted to find a monument that was connected to all the elements. When I first visited many, many years ago, it was the only monument I’ve ever come across in Greece, and also while travelling round the world, where I feel so connected to the sky, the earth and the sea. There is a raw energy in that positioning.”

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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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