The Greek luxury label transforms one of the country’s most recognizable garments into a contemporary statement built around movement, proportion and attitude.
One of the most recognizable silhouettes in modern Greek history has found an unexpected new life in women’s fashion.
For its Spring/Summer 2026 collection, Greek luxury label Zeus+Dione has introduced the “Foustanela” skirt, a short, high-waisted cotton skirt that borrows the volume and movement of the traditional fustanella without attempting to reproduce it as costume.
Available in both ecru and black, the piece takes the familiar fullness of the historic pleated garment and sharpens it into a clean, contemporary silhouette. Styled with a simple blouse, it has the ease of a summer skirt. Paired with the brand’s structured, hand-embroidered “Kymata” vest, it becomes something bolder: an unmistakably Greek fashion statement that still feels entirely at home in the present.
Zeus+Dione is not asking women to dress as figures from a historical pageant. The designers have extracted the elements that make the fustanella visually powerful—its volume, rhythm and movement—and placed them within the language of contemporary luxury fashion.
In the official uniform of Greece’s Presidential Guard, the fustanella is made from approximately 30 meters of white fabric and contains 400 pleats, traditionally associated with the years of Ottoman rule. It became closely connected to the fighters of the Greek Revolution and remains one of the defining elements of the Evzone uniform, according to the Presidency of the Hellenic Republic.
The Zeus+Dione interpretation carries that memory without being weighed down by it. The result is playful rather than ceremonial, feminine without becoming precious and Greek without resorting to the predictable blue-and-white shorthand that so often passes for Hellenic design.
The skirt belongs to the brand’s “Neon Odyssey” Spring/Summer 2026 collection, which begins, in the company’s telling, aboard a ferry crossing the Aegean. The collection explores the territory between heritage and escape, while its title plays with the Greek root of “neon”—something new.
That premise could easily slip into travel-poster romanticism. Under creative director Marios Schwab, however, the references are translated through proportion, structure and the body rather than reproduced literally.
Schwab is hardly an unknown designer who arrived in Athens through the heritage-fashion circuit. The Greek-Austrian designer was raised in Athens, studied in Berlin and earned his master’s degree at Central Saint Martins in London. He became part of the celebrated wave of London designers that emerged during the mid-2000s and received the New Designer honor at the 2006 British Fashion Awards.
His sculptural, body-conscious designs were worn by women including Kate Moss, Kylie Minogue, Chloë Sevigny, Thandiwe Newton and Clémence Poésy. After building his career in London, Schwab returned to Athens and became Zeus+Dione’s creative director in 2020, presenting his first full collection for the house the following year, as detailed in a Vogue profile of the designer’s return to Greece.
His arrival helped move Zeus+Dione beyond the familiar category of attractive Greek resortwear. Schwab has described the brand’s aesthetic through the idea of “Doric minimalism,” drawing upon architectural proportion, the golden ratio and the relationship between fabric and the body.
In an interview with GG Magazine, Schwab discussed how the clean lines of the Doric order form part of the foundation of how he understands the human form. That approach helps explain why the new skirt works: its connection to the fustanella is immediately readable, but its shape remains controlled, graphic and modern.
The brand itself has also moved well beyond boutique-curiosity status. Founded by Dimitra Kolotoura and Mareva Grabowski during Greece’s economic crisis, Zeus+Dione was built around reviving regional textile production and connecting Greek artisanship with an international luxury market.
Today, the company works with dozens of artisan-makers across Greece. Its textiles and components have involved silk production in Soufli, embroidery in Argos and Metsovo, weaving, crochet, jewelry-making and other specialist crafts from communities throughout the country.
In an interview with Vogue Greece, Kolotoura spoke about the company’s ambition to engage with the world’s major international fashion houses on equal terms. She also pointed to Zeus+Dione’s work producing silk fabric for Dior’s Cruise 2021 collection as evidence that Greek textile craftsmanship can compete at the highest levels of international fashion.
The brand now operates prominent boutiques in Athens, including a location at Astir Marina alongside names such as Dior, Louis Vuitton, Gucci and Saint Laurent. Its expansion and increasingly international profile were explored by Vogue in a feature on Zeus+Dione’s Athens presence, which placed the label within a wider movement presenting a confident and modern version of Greek identity to the world.
The “Foustanela” skirt fits neatly into that evolution. It acknowledges a symbol almost every Greek recognizes, but refuses to leave it behind glass, on a parade ground or inside the safe confines of a national anniversary.
There is history in its shape, certainly. But there is also flirtation, freedom and the simple pleasure of a skirt designed to move.
That may be the most interesting thing Zeus+Dione is doing: treating Greek heritage neither as a museum piece nor as decoration, but as raw material for something new.
The point is not to wear history as a costume. It is to allow history to move again.
