There have been plenty of references to pleated garments in this week's posts mentioning Issey Miyake, but, if you want to get some fresh inspirations for pleated designs, always opt for the classical period. You can actually do so by checking out the news. It was announced indeed today that the Getty Museum in Los Angeles will return to Italy three life-size terracotta statues.
The statues, probably a funerary sculptural group that may have decorated a tomb, depict a seated man with an open mouth and a plectrum in his right hand (while his left hand probably held a kithara or harp - missing) and two mythical sirens, that is creatures that lured sailors to death and that were part bird and part woman.
Dating back to between 350 and 300BC, the group is known as "Orpheus and the Sirens". Orpheus was indeed associated with the Sirens in the Argonautica, when he helped Jason and his crew safely sail past the Sirens by playing music and enchanting the monsters, yet the usual iconography depicting Orpheus shows him in elaborately embroidered oriental costume, so this may just be a deceased mortal as a musician.
Fashion-wise there are a lot of elements to check out: sadly only traces of the original colours are left, but the man wears a mantle that covers his legs to the calves, his shoulder, and part of his left arm. He also wears thong sandals.
For what regards the sirens' bodies, half of them is human, while the lower half features a bird's tail, legs, and talons, which grip a small, rocky base. Both the sirens wear a thigh-length chiton with an apoptygma (draped fold) that, clinging to their body, formed "windswept" pleats. A sash is wrapped high around the chest and two shoulder straps cross over the bust.
One siren has a pose of contemplation with her right arm folded beneath her breasts and her left hand propped under her tilted head; another has her left hand held in front of her chest, and her right arm stretched further out, a pose that suggests singing or dancing.
There are different ideas and inspirations here in this group of sculptures, from pleated designs and windswept motifs (that could be rendered as rigid and fixed motifs through innovative techniques and materials) to the theme of the hybrid (the side and back views of the siren sculptures may be inspiring as they show the bodies of these creatures in a clearer way).
Believed to have originated from the Taranto area in the southern Italian region of Puglia, the group has been on a list of stolen artefacts that Italy has been seeking to reclaim possession of since 2006.
The museum is also working with the Italian culture ministry to return other relics, but also an oil painting by Camillo Miola (1840-1919) known for his exotic Neo-Pompeian and Orientalist subjects.
The painting is entitled "The Oracle" (1881) and represents the Pythia, a virgin selected in ceremonies that established her as the god Apollo's choice, sitting atop the sacred tripod as the Delphic oracle.
Miola filled the canvas with seemingly archaeologically accurate details, from costumes to architecture, and furnishings, and painted in a highly detailed style to create an ancient world that appears fully real, including in the painting (on the left) the omphalos, or "navel of the Earth", the most sacred object at Delphi, considered by Greeks to be the center of the world. While there are plenty of pleated tunics in this painting, "The Oracle" may be more interesting for textile designers that may be inspired by the richly decorated tunics of the men kneeling in front of the Pythia.
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