Greek mythology is having a pop-cultural moment, but myth has long been part of Giuseppe di Morabito’s vocabulary; for spring 2027, the shift was one of perspective. Rather than following Odysseus across the sea, he stayed in Ithaca with Penelope, who gave the collection her name. “We always think about Odysseus’s journey: he gets shipwrecked, travels for years, loses himself, then comes home transformed,” Di Morabito said, “But we never really think about Penelope. Her waiting wasn’t static, she had to go through an even more important, inner journey.”
Transformation became most tangible in the materials. Lace was coated in gold foil, while animalier, including python, was covered in transparent crystals so the pattern remained visible underneath, giving the surface an almost wet appearance. “I had worked with animal prints before, but never python in this way,” said the designer. “It’s also the first time we’ve covered it with transparent crystals.” Elsewhere, bucolic motifs were drawn directly in topaz, silver, and aquamarine stones. Bands of lace in different widths were assembled over organza, effectively constructing a new surface from scratch: “They’re almost fabrics that don’t exist,” Di Morabito said.
The silhouettes moved between Di Morabito’s familiar body-consciousness and newer propositions. Flared and cigarette trousers appeared with bras and narrow dresses; corsets and crinolines brought back historical volumes, while a cape dress introduced a looser, almost caftan-like shape. Linen entered the collection for the first time, stripped of any rustic association and treated with the same glitz as the rest of the wardrobe. Macramé, satin, lace, feathers, and oversized crystals kept moving between the mythological and something distinctly ’90s.
Water was a recurring reference, both in color and surface, while Circe, Calypso, and the Sirens hovered around the collection as other female presences from The Odyssey. In the press release, they were described as different possibilities of female identity—desire, instinct, freedom, knowledge, solitude, power—rather than temptations encountered along a man’s journey. “The idea is to lose yourself in order to find yourself again, and to return transformed,” Di Morabito said. Although Penelope never leaves Ithaca, she hardly stays still.
