Of Ancient Vases and Pleated Skirts

You may have stumbled upon Corinthian, Greek or Etruscan vases during a museum visit. Greek vases from the protogeometrical/geometrical periods are actually pretty inspiring from an art/fashion point of view thanks to their intricate patterns featuring swirls, triangles, wavy lines and arcs.

Yet there are also vases wih black or red figures that may prove interesting since they usually tell a story. This Attic black-figure amphora from around 530 B.C. shows for examples a woman mourning a dead warrior (Eos or Memnon) on one side and Menelaus and Helen on the other.

One dress in Clover Canyon's Pre-Fall 2014 collection, inspired by mythology and the Greek Isles (a collection that, in some cases, verges for themes and fabrics towards the Spring/Summer season), moves from a Corinthian black-figure vase and employs the same colour palette – black and terracotta with white highlights – of the vases.

Invented by the Corinthians around the 7th century, this technique – popular between 620 and 480 B.C. – spread to the Greek islands and Athens, reaching also Italy where black-figure vases were favoured by the Etruscans.

This technique consisted in incising the contours of silhouetted figures, including animals and humans, on the vase. At the very beginning animals were more popular, but delicately composed human scenes with detailed narrative elements borrowed from mythology and iconography started prevailing in a later phase.

Clover Canyon’s Rozae Nichols included in her Pre-Fall collection also dresses, jackets and shirts with figures of Athena, the Greek Gods, architectural motifs such as temple columns, map-prints and pleated skirts that could be considered as combinations of Greek himation/chiton with a gladiator skirt.

A final tip for people interested in developing original pleated motifs taken from classic art: try to look also at Etruscan statues or ex-votos showing detailed parts of the body, since, in some cases, the pleated skirts on some of these sculptures are architecturally pretty.