Fashion, lovely stones and time to reunite the Parthenon Marbles

This article in The Guardian on Sunday, by Chloe Mac Donnell is terrifically pleasing to BCRPM:

At Erdem Moralıoğlu’s show, held at the British Museum, the actors Kristin Scott Thomas and Ruth Wilson were guests of honour. The catwalk was staged in front of the Parthenon marbles – the fifth-century BC masterpieces that sparked Rishi Sunak’s recent diplomatic “blunder”. Moralıoğlu, whose collection was inspired by the American-born Greek soprano Maria Callas, said he had chosen the location to reflect how Callas had been “uprooted”. A booklet of images and notes left on each guest’s seat highlighted how, for Callas, “the absence of home was poignant and profound”.

It’s really very exciting that such a high profile fashion show was staged in front of the Marbles, because Erdem made a point of emphasising how for Callas - his Muse - “the absence of home was poignant and profound”. Just so.

Those present were facing away from Pheidias’s figures but from those silent stones at their backs they will have felt ‘Time's winged chariot drawing near’.

If those Marbles could only speak they would express the same haunting feeling of being uprooted, so we must speak for them. The day will surely come when those grievously uprooted sculptures will go home.

And on Wednesday 21 February in The Times, Victoria Hislop's thoughts on the fashion show too.

"An archaeologist pointed out to me, the volume of people present at Erdem’s show, plus the lighting and cameras, would have affected the temperature and humidity in the gallery. This could well have had a negative effect on these priceless works of art.

The sculptures are not indestructible — but they are irreplaceable. In London there are neoclassical buildings everywhere you look that could have been used for commercial promotion, all of them inspired by the architecture of ancient Greece. Yet the link between what the models were wearing and Medea or Greek sculpture seems spurious.

One irony is that the audience sat with their backs to the Parthenon sculptures — they wouldn’t have noticed if they were there or not. So why take the risk of damage? Of offence?" Asks Victoria.