Bacchanalia’s Apollo’s Muse room already feels unreal on a regular night; for DI PETSA’s “Medusa’s Lover” it became something closer to a vision. Monumental sculptures loomed over the marble floor like silent witnesses, their bodies suddenly recast as characters in Dimitra Petsa’s myth: the frozen lovers Medusa could not resist looking at. The collection unfolded as if she had just awakened there, half‑dreaming, half‑remembering, negotiating the power of a gaze that can crystallise the world and the seduction of finally shedding an old skin.
The show opened with a dress that made the idea of transformation almost literal: a sand‑coloured, high‑neck column composed of delicate, scale‑like rows of tulle that seemed to ripple as the model walked. From the waist down, the fabric dissolved into sheer, weightless layers, the body visible beneath like something freshly unearthed. It looked as though the garment were caught mid‑moult, a skin in the process of being left behind. DI PETSA’s wetlook signature has always hinted at rebirth; here, the draping is cut specifically to echo snake skin on the verge of shedding, fabric held in a state of almost‑movement rather than drama for drama’s sake.
That language develops in the white dresses that followed, where wetlook panels curve and twist over the torso like streams of water turning to marble. One gown clings and pools in asymmetrical folds, the sheer underlayer revealing flashes of leg through a high slit, while strands of crystal drip from the model’s hair like condensed light. Another look pushes the brand’s eveningwear into darker territory: a black column, carved open at the bust and waist with sinuous cut‑outs, held together by a single jewel at the sternum. It’s pure femme fatale – dangerous, controlled, the kind of dress you wear when you’re the one deciding who turns to stone.
Silhouette is treated not as a series of separates but as a complete proposition. Bodysuits dominate, used as anchors for whole looks rather than just base layers, so that the body itself becomes the continuous line around which everything else is wrapped. Cut‑outs carve across jersey and leather like ritual markings, opening up flashes of hip and rib, tracing the path of transformation almost anatomically. The hips, in particular, are foregrounded as a centre of sacral change – the place where desire, fertility and personal power meet – and many of the strongest looks seem to pivot around that axis, whether through high‑cut briefs, harnessed panels, or draped skirts that twist and knot low on the waist. The impression is of women in the process of becoming, not yet finished and all the more compelling for it.
Menswear continues DI PETSA’s quiet but assured expansion into what the house calls the “Modern Ancient Male Figure”. One standout look pairs dark, flared trousers with a black top ruched like coiled muscle, punctured by deliberate slashes that reveal skin at the shoulder, waist and hip. It’s sculptural and sensual in equal measure, the wetlook language translated to a male body without losing intensity. Elsewhere, soaked tank tops cling to the torso like a second skin, while draped panels tie at the back like a corset for men, re‑inscribing masculinity with curves and tension usually reserved for womenswear. It’s a version of the male figure that feels fluid rather than armoured – statues stepping down from their plinths, aware of their own sensuality.
Beauty and styling complete the transformation into living myth. Working with stylist Emily Evans, Petsa imagines the AW26 woman as a modern mythical creature whose power feels both dangerous and inevitable. Make‑up artist Bea Sweet keeps the face deliberately lived‑in: skin shines with a fresh, sweaty luminosity, the kind achieved not by highlighter but by effort, by heat. Body gloss is heightened with Ples’Jour lube, giving limbs and collarbones a serpentine slickness that reads as both erotic and slightly otherworldly. Models appear with what look like freshly inked tattoos, new marks on freshly revealed skin, signalling beginnings rather than old allegiances. Headpieces made from raw crystals obscure their eyes, or the models raise their hands to shield their gaze, playing with the danger of Medusa’s stare: what happens if she chooses when, and whether, to look back.
Jewellery and footwear echo this interplay of relic and risk. The Medusa Goddess pieces from AWE Inspired trace the body with stacked chains, serpent rings coiled around fingers, and medallions that sit at the centre of the chest like portable talismans, while men’s pendant necklaces set with black and green onyx nod to modern antiquity. Western Affair mule heels, edged with gold and silver spikes and rendered in high‑gloss patent black, red and white, give every step a sharpened outline; they look as if they could wound the ground itself.
“Medusa’s Lover” doesn’t simply retell the myth from a sympathetic angle; it reframes Medusa as a figure of self‑actualisation, someone whose curse becomes the site of her rebirth. The show suggests that becoming your higher self is an erotic process – seductive, frightening, and slow, like a snake slipping out of its old skin with no guarantee of what it will look like on the other side. In Apollo’s Muse, surrounded by stone bodies that might once have been lovers, DI PETSA offers a wardrobe for that moment of shedding: clothes that cling and then release, that mark the body and then reveal it, that treat power not as something bestowed but as something claimed, gaze unwavering.
