The Archaeology of Self: Di Petsa and the Excavation of Myth

As a child in Athens, Dimitra Petsa prayed to Poseidon. Today, the ocean remains her muse, but her latest collection suggests she has learned to listen for the answer deep within the earth.

 

Since launching Di Petsa in 2019, the London-based, Central Saint Martins-trained designer has become synonymous with her signature "wet look"—a secret, form-fitting drapery technique that renders fabric perpetually saturated. It is a style that has cloaked everyone from Bella Hadid to FKA Twigs, establishing water as the lifeblood of her brand. But for Petsa, water is never just water. Rooted in ecofeminist philosophy, her work posits that how we treat the planet mirrors how we treat our own bodies; her designs are an invitation to shed the shame attached to female sexuality.

 

 

For Spring/Summer 2025, presented during London Fashion Week in September, Petsa traded the surface of the sea for the strata beneath it. Titled “The Archaeology of Self,” the collection marks an expansive new direction—a visual journey inward and downward, in search of the source.

 

Departing from her signature semi-sheer evening wear and bridal silhouettes, this collection expanded the Di Petsa universe into ready-to-wear. “I want someone to be able to be a Di Petsa girl all day, not just on their wedding day,” Petsa told the press. But beyond broadening her categories, the show was an act of exploration—a mission to excavate the mythology upon which her brand, and her identity, is built.

 

 

To find herself, Petsa first had to go home. Not just to modern Athens, but further back, past Classical Greece and into the Bronze Age. Her aim was twofold: to unearth the true roots of the culture that raised her, and to reclaim its narrative from the male-dominated fields of archaeology and history. “There were some prolific female figures then,” she noted, “but we’re missing a female perspective… There are so many female figures in history at large.”

 

“The Archaeology of Self” seeks to rectify that absence. It tells the stories of the influential women who existed alongside the canonical philosophers, and honors the all-encompassing goddesses worshipped in the matriarchal whispers of the land before it was called “Greece.” For Petsa, this is a powerful subversion. “As a designer,” she explained, “it’s interesting to subvert what Greek mythology and the basis of Western culture are. As well as female sexuality and how it has been portrayed in Greek culture.”

 

Drawing from the magical realism of a Greek summer—tourist-shop kitsch, romantic escapades, and seaside reverie—the collection channeled this ancient energy into a new abundance of wearable pieces.

 

 

The show’s set, a landscape of sand and fragmented ruins, was the first clue: this was a dig site. The opening look solidified the metaphor. Model Nassia Matsa emerged as an awakened sculpture, her body anointed in clay, wearing a blue-and-white swimsuit and matching angel wings. She was a Grecian relic come to life, fresh from the excavation, sunglasses on, heading to the beach. It was a grounding of mysticism in soil—a story where earth and heaven collide.

 

This tension between the ancient and the immediate played out across the collection. Models wore tops emblazoned with museum-like slogans: “Ancient Male Figure,” “Fragment of Aphrodite.” Sarongs were printed with Vitruvian waves, cargo pants were detailed with button embroidery that mimicked the glint of water, and woven beach bags added a tactile, ready-to-wear realism. The brand’s ethereal “Angel of Athens” motif reappeared, this time as a draped white mini dress with two cutouts on the back—a phantom gateway for wings visible only to the wearer, preserving the collection’s intimate mysticism.

 

In an era of relentless exposure, Petsa’s command of the erogenous zone remains a study in nuance. Her designs are guided by an internal, female gaze, prioritizing the wearer’s feeling over the onlooker’s pleasure. “Female pleasure, especially in visual language, is obviously often portrayed through the male gaze,” she said. “I always tell my models and performers that the audience is here for us. We’re not here for them.”

 

 

This philosophy manifests in the fluidity of her draping; cutouts and sheer fabrics transform skin into an extension of the garment, rather than an object of display. “The women who wear my designs, no matter how revealing… tell me they feel something different,” Petsa shared. “Not just plain sexy. For me, sexuality is something quite spiritual. I want them to feel blessed by Aphrodite.”

 

This sense of the divine culminated in the show’s final act. Inspired by Selene, the ancient personification of the moon, the presentation traced the luminary’s journey—how she conceals and reveals herself, fragmented and whole by her own volition. After a procession of models in black, teal, and cream, one emerged wrapped in shining silver organza, like metallic seaweed beaded with pearls.

 

Then, washing ashore, came the revelation. Brazilian model Ana Portela stepped into the light wearing the seashell gown. Adorned with strings of freshwater pearls and yellow quartz crystals, she was not just a model, but Selene herself. She was the mythological climax the archaeologist had been digging toward—the discovery that the treasure at the end of the quest is, in fact, a transformed version of the seeker. “The reason why I design,” Petsa reflected, “is because we aspire to become an elevated version of ourselves. We’re trying to work through the malleability of our identity and who we want to become.”

 

This story of self-excavation will not end on the runway. Petsa is currently working on a form-defying book set in Athens, following an archaeologist on a quest to uncover female divinity at the intersection of ancient Greek religion and modern Greek Orthodoxy. Blending novel, poetry, and abstraction, it is a natural extension of her intuitive practice. “This show was also very inspired by my writings,” she said. “It’s kind of like a prelude to what is coming out.”

 

Through “The Archaeology of Self,” Petsa transforms her craft into an act of unearthing, urging the wearer—and herself—to dig with words, with hands, and with spirit, toward a personal divinity that has been waiting, buried just beneath the surface, all along.