After all the social media/red carpet frenzy, I finally went to see The Odyssey, expecting to be immersed in Christopher Nolan’s world. Even though I did not had the time form a final opinion about the movie itself (give me a break, it’s been like 12h since I saw it, there’s a lot to diggest) I was definitly oblivious of everything around me during those 3 hours.
The scale, the landscapes, the physicality of the film and the feeling of watching something genuinely epic unfold on a cinema screen were everything I expected, although in a totally different format than Nolan’s previous movies.
But I am a fashion designer, so naturally, somewhere between the gods, Charlize, the battles, Charlize and Odysseus’s long journey home, and also Charlize (again), I found myself paying very close attention to the clothes.
The costumes were not merely something beautiful happening in the background. They weren’t there just to make sense . They were one of the elements that made me feel most involved in the story. They gave weight to the characters, placed them within the world and allowed us to understand status, power, desire, endurance and the passage of time before any of those things had to be explained. I mean, that’s fashion
And yet, while they made the world feel ancient, I kept having one very modern thought:
I would wear that now.
Especially Calypso’s wardrobe, which was easily my favourite in the entire film.
That tension, between clothes that situate us in an ancient story and clothes that still feel desirable today, is not accidental. It is at the very heart of the film’s costume design. Props fro them people, they go forgotten to often.
Not historically accurate, and that was precisely the point
I’ve been reading a lot about the costumes, created by Ellen Mirojnick, who previously worked with Christopher Nolan on Oppenheimer and whose extraordinary career also includes Basic Instinct, Wall Street, Behind the Candelabra, Bridgerton and The Greatest Showman.
When approaching The Odyssey, Mirojnick and Nolan were not interested in producing a perfect archaeological reconstruction of Bronze Age Greece. Nolan wanted to avoid the visual clichés of the traditional Hollywood “sword-and-leather-sandals” epic. Thank god, ‘cause the leather sandals is a trend I hope we never go back to.
As Mirojnick explained:
“We were not after a historical period. We were after a timeless period.”
That sentence completely changed the way I looked at the costumes.
There has been considerable discussion around their historical accuracy, particularly Matt Damon’s Corinthian-style helmet, which historians have pointed out does not correspond to the period in which the events that inspired The Odyssey would have taken place Some critics felt that the armour belonged more to Hollywood’s collective idea of Ancient Greece than to Mycenaean history (don’t these guys get the point of fiction? Ugh).
But that was the intention.
The film does not ask us to believe that these clothes were lifted from a perfectly preserved historical archive. It creates a visual language that feels ancient without being trapped within one precise era. It mixes Bronze Age research, Greek mythology, natural materials, cinematic memory and a modern understanding of the body, especially female bodies.
The costumes are not historically literal. They are emotionally legible, duh.
Mirojnick worked with everyday materials like linen, leather and bronze, but treated them in a way that rejected the polished perfection we usually associate with cinematic antiquity. The bronze is patinated, almost old, the leather worn, the linen weathered.
She described it as a world that felt “exhausted and haunted and salt-stained and fractured”. Every costume had to carry some of that erosion- Vogue
The clothes do not simply tell us where these people are. They tell us what they have endured throughout those years.
Clothes shaped by movement, and clothes shaped by waiting
Odysseus’s wardrobe evolves with him. He deteriorates, disguises himself, adapts and rebuilds. His clothes become progressively stripped of the authority with which his journey began.
At first, armor identifies him as a king and warrior. Eventually, that armor becomes less a symbol of power than a memory of the man he used to be.
Penelope’s transformation is much quieter.
While Odysseus travels through different lands and identities, Penelope remains in Ithaca, surrounded by men waiting for her to abandon hope and choose another husband. Her wardrobe does not deteriorate in the same way. Instead, it becomes richer and more intentional.
His clothes are shaped by movement. Hers are shaped by waiting.
“According to Mirojnick, the richer the colour, the more powerful and strategic Penelope appeared. The jewel tones also communicate her refusal to accept that Odysseus is dead. She is not dressed as a widow because, in her mind, she is not one.” W Magazine
Her clothes become a form of resistance.
This is one of the wardrobe decisions I found most brilliant because it challenges the idea that waiting is passive. That, somehow, portrays the waiting game from an angle I’ve never seen before. Penelope’s stillness is not emptiness. It is discipline, intelligence and control.
The contrast becomes even more apparent through the suitors. They wear some of the brightest, most polished bronze in the film, while Odysseus and his men return marked by war. The shine does not represent heroism. It represents performance.
Calypso and the wardrobe I wanted to take home
Of all the characters, Calypso’s wardrobe stayed with me the most, easy to understand why. There’s nothing I love more than the effortless, goddess-like vibe.
Charlize Theron is dressed in a way that feels elemental rather than ornamental. Her clothes are connected to sand, sea, isolation and nature. They appear worn, wet, tied, layered and gathered directly around the body.
One of her costumes includes a layer of netting. Mirojnick imagined it not as a decorative fashion element but as something Calypso could actually use to fish. That practical explanation makes the look even more compelling. The sensuality does not come from dressing her as a conventional temptress. It comes from the body, the environment and the apparent simplicity of the materials.
Nothing feels overly designed, even though it obviously is.
It reminded me of the best kind of summer dressing, when clothes feel almost instinctive. A piece of fabric tied in the right place. A glimpse of skin. A texture shaped by salt and sun to match summer hair.
It is perhaps the purest example of why the film’s wardrobe works. The clothes belong to the story, but they also belong to the present.
The wardrobes of all the women characters establish different expressions of femininity, and I admired that deeply. Penelope is strategic and steadfast. Athena is controlled. Calypso is elemental. Circe is accumulated mystery. Clytemnestra is regal force.
None of them is simply “the Greek goddess”. Each one occupies a distinct visual world.
Why Ancient Greek style still feels like the epitome of summer
While watching the film, I kept wondering why this aesthetic still feels so relevant. Why do draped dresses, linen, bare shoulders, gold jewellery and leather continue to return every summer?
Perhaps because Ancient Greek dress reduced clothing to its most enduring elements: fabric, body, movement, proportion and the whimsical factor.
That simplicity makes the language endlessly adaptable.
A draped dress can look ancient or futuristic. A one-shoulder silhouette can feel regal, sensual or minimal. A piece of cloth gathered at the waist can become a beach dress, an evening gown or a couture sculpture.
Ancient Greek style has become an archetype. It is no longer tied to a single century because it deals with ideas that fashion never stops revisiting, freedom, sensuality, strength and the beauty of the human form.
Fashion has never really left Ancient Greece
The influence is present throughout fashion history, but it continues to feel especially visible in more recent collections a
nd contemporary design.
Just remember Azzedine Alaïa that created clothes that followed and celebrated the body like a second skin. Or Pieter Mulier continued to explore that relationship through sculptural silhouettes, stretched drapes and the tension between covering and revealing.
Think about Versace, the relationship with antiquity is embedded in the identity of the house. The Medusa logo, the gold, the draping and Gianni Versace’s fascination with the body transformed classical imagery into something unapologetically sensual and modern.
Alexander McQueen repeatedly used mythology. This connection became particularly visible during The Odyssey press tour, when Zendaya wore an archival Givenchy Spring 1997 Couture look from McQueen’s first collection for the house.
Chanel made the connection completely explicit with its Resort 2018 collection, titled La Modernité de l’Antiquité. Karl Lagerfeld transformed the Grand Palais into a vision of Greek ruins and presented draped dresses, laurel details and gladiator sandals with heels shaped like Ionic columns.
Schiaparelli, too, continues to blur the line between the human body, clothing and sculpture. Zendaya’s white Schiaparelli Couture look at the London premiere of The Odyssey, with a molded bodice resembling a marble bust, made that connection almost literal.
The list is endless, but the point is these houses are not recreating ancient clothing. They are returning to the same fundamental questions. How can fabric transform the body? When does a dress become sculpture? How little construction is needed to create presence? Can a piece feel ancient and futuristic at the same time?
The big picture - We are still dressing with the same intent
I loved The Odyssey as a film, but the wardrobe made me experience it differently.
It reminded me that clothes can communicate a journey before a character speaks. They can carry grief, ambition, seduction, authority and survival. They can show us who is moving, who is waiting, who is performing and who has nothing left to prove.
Most of all, the film made me think about why a visual language created thousands of years ago can still make a designer sitting in a cinema think, I would wear that now, and that’s the ultimate power of fashion.
Perhaps it is because Greek style was never really a trend.
I am not a person of trends. Trends depend on novelty. The principles behind these clothes do not. Fabric still falls around the body. Draping still creates movement. Linen still feels like summer.
The Odyssey may not give us a historically perfect version of Ancient Greek dress. It gives us something more emotionally recognizable, a version of antiquity that feels as though it existed thousands of years ago and might walk past us today.
And perhaps that is the real meaning of timeless style.
