Mary Katrantzou. Image credit: Jamie Stoker
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On October 3, Athens-born London-based designer Mary Katrantzou will present her ready-to-wear spring/summer 2020 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 . 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.
Mary Katrantzou spring/summer 2019. Image credit: Getty Images
“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.”
Backstage at Mary Katrantzou spring/summer 2019. Image credit: Jamie Stoker
So what made Katrantzou and Vardinoyannis’s case so appealing? “A combination of factors,” Katrantzou explains. “We are coming together to raise funds for a good cause [a proportion of seats to the show will be available via donation to ELPIDA]; and the collection is made up of individual looks with different fabrication techniques, each inspired by the philosophies born out of arts, literature and sciences at the time the temple was built.” It’s safe to say, too, that as UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador, Vardinoyannis knows a thing or two about world heritage sites—no doubt an added reassurance.
Oscar-winning composer Vangelis Papathanasiou, who worked with Katrantzou on Russell Maliphant’s contemporary dance production , will create an original soundtrack, while Etienne Russo of Villa Eugénie (clients include Chanel, Dior and Givenchy) will produce the event.
Temple of Poseidon. Image credit: Getty Images.
Believed to have been built in by Iktinos, the architect of the Temple of Hephaistos in Athens’s Ancient Agora, around 444 BC (the same year as the Parthenon) the Temple of Poseidon is named after the God of the Sea for good reason. The site, located 70km south of Athens, is perched on a rocky cliff top that plunges 65m into the Aegean. According to Greek mythology, it is here that the Aegeus, King of Athens—mistakenly thinking his son Theseus had been slain by the Minotaur—took his own life by leaping into the water below, in turn giving the body of water it’s name.
“I first went there when I was about 10 years old,” Katrantzou remembers. “You feel completely removed, it’s a place where as a teenager I would go and collect my thoughts. Even though it’s inundated with tourists now, you really feel connected to the elements. There’s no other monument I’ve visited that’s joined to the sky and the sea, and the earth like the Temple of Poseidon.”