Literature Humanities 19

textbook:

1: he [odysseus] went away and you came around (dress by tsumori chisato, shoes by lanvin)
2: and bothered me every night (dress by matthew williamson, sandals by dvf)
3: my boyfriend’s back and you’re gonna be in trouble (issey miyake head to toe)

TEXTBOOK is a fashion blog I have always found interesting. John Jannuzzi, editor at Conde Nast’s Lucky Magazine, collects characters from novels, epics, poems, and movies, and dresses them in the today’s high fashion, often combining heroes with Hugo Boss and heroines Hermes. 

Above, Jannuzzi demonstrates the development of Penelope through her choice of style as the epic progresses. The first outfit can be reminiscent to the heroine’s entrance in Book 1, when Penelope, “shining among women,” entered the palace in which the suitors were busying themselves with consumption of Odysseus’s food (35).

The second outfit can be referenced to Penelope upon hearing the news of her son’s departure in Book 4, in which she “had no strength left to down in a chair, … but sat down on the floor of our own well-wrought bedchamber weeping pitifully” (83). The news of her absent child, in juxtaposition to her missing husband, draws terrible sorrows through Homer’s word choice (“weeping constantly”) and diction (Penelope claims the gods have given her more sorrows than anyone else). This can be fully represented in the short Matthew Williamson dress above; the blue hues symbolize the tears of Penelope’s weeping and the remaining colours in the dress allude to the chaos and confusion she experiences upon hearing her son’s news.

However, both of these two outfits are contrasted sharply by the final. Issey Miyake’s sheer dress combines the cerulean tears of Penelope’s past with the sheer fabric to represent the future of the palace and Ithaka following Odysseus’s homecoming.

Other Homer characters Jannuzzi has styled include (each with a link to their post): Briseis, Helen of Troy, Calypso, and Circe. 

- Courtland Thomas