By Ella McCauley
On 23 February, Di Petsa unveiled her Autumn/Winter 2026 collection, Medusa’s Lover. The Greek designer, known for mining her heritage through mythological archetypes and statuesque white drapery, returned to Medusa as the season’s foundation, where eroticism, power, and transformation collide. Her background in performance art remained evident in the meticulousness of her world-building. The runway was staged among ancient Grecian sculptures, imagined as Medusa’s petrified lovers, set against the gothic interior of the Apollo’s Muse Room at Bacchanalia in Mayfair. The setting felt immersive, suspended somewhere between ritual and spectacle.
For Petsa, Medusa emerged not as monster but as maternal force, a conduit through which female rage is channelled into autonomy and strength. Snakeskin prints, strategic cut-outs, and panels of high-shine fabric set against liquid drapery proposed a hybrid body: part woman, part serpent. The collection oscillated between armour-like leather silhouettes and fluid, body-contouring gowns. Fabric sculpted seductive, sculptural lines across the torso and hips, asserting a female-centred eroticism that felt deliberate and self-possessed rather than ornamental.
Accessories sharpened the myth for a contemporary lens. Layered chains, snake tattoos, and patent spiked shoes grounded the narrative in confrontation and resolve, ensuring even the softest drapes felt edged with danger. Look 35 crystallised this tension: wet, sheer drapery fading from blush pink into black clung to the body, while sharp-nailed footwear and a coiled serpent tattoo amplified a sense of unrestrained, formidable rage. The gradient suggested transition—beauty on the brink of eruption—reinforcing Medusa not as victim, but as agent of her own mythology.
The collection also highlighted Petsa’s ability to merge conceptual depth with increasing accessibility. After receiving British Fashion Council NEWGEN support in 2022 and staging her first independent show last September, she began navigating a more commercial cadence, introducing graphic text and tourist-style T-shirts that nodded to the sandy, sun-drenched world of SS26. In AW26, this approach evolved without diluting the narrative. A draped long-sleeve top punctured with skin-shedding cut-outs (Look 25) literalised transformation in wearable form. A T-shirt detailed with eyelets tracing the hip bones and depicting Poseidon’s trident (Look 29) fused ancient symbolism with contemporary irreverence. A cropped inverted V-hem denim jacket with distressed panel lines recalling moulting snakeskin (Look 11) translated the house codes into a sharper, everyday proposition. Together, these pieces demonstrated how bespoke sensuality and commercial instinct can coexist seamlessly.
The closing look distilled the collection’s thesis. Petsa’s signature white draping—first developed during her MA at Central Saint Martins—was reimagined in black, wet-look fabric that clung and shifted with the body. The surface mimicked snakeskin in the moment before shedding, fabric suspended mid-metamorphosis, underscoring her enduring fascination with change as empowerment. Set against black leather and sharpened metal spikes, the drapery retained its sensuality while projecting force. A studded leather veil, a subtle nod to her forthcoming bridal offering, reinforced this tension, subverting passive femininity in favour of command.
With Medusa’s Lover, Petsa consolidated the draped language she is known for, proving its continued relevance within a collection that balanced seduction and strength in near-equal measure.
