Fascinating, mysterious, seductive, dangerous, and irresistibly magnetic: mermaids are undoubtedly among the most glamorous mythological figures that have ever existed. Legend has it that they initially had a hybrid form somewhere between woman and sea creature, considered daughters of the river god Acheloo and a muse. They inhabited treacherous reefs, such as those of Capri or Salerno Bay, and possessed a song so powerful that it lured sailors, leading them inevitably to shipwreck and death. Instead, the version we know today of mermaids, the half-woman, half-fish version, came in the Middle Ages, probably to distinguish them sharply from angelic figures under Christian influence, or as a result of contamination with Germanic and Scandinavian legends about the Ondinas and other similar aquatic creatures.
Legendary reconstructions aside, their story has never ceased to fascinate, and even more so have their visual codes. After all, we are talking about creatures capable more than any other of bewitching: a voice capable of attracting men, which in a contemporary key translates into an extremely feminine sex appeal, but always shrouded in mystery, seduction and myth.
Today this legacy continues to live on not only in mythology, but in the aesthetic and creative everyday, returning strongly among the trends of the summer season. After all, a figure so linked to the marine world could not but naturally associate itself with summer, and first among all to show us this was none other than Matthieu Blazy, creative director of Chanel, who for the maison’s latest Cruise Collection landed in Biarritz, taking up the origins of the brand founded by Coco Chanel and parading its mermaids, revisited thanks to fluid silhouettes, iridescent fabrics and marine reflections, all of which were found in the collection’s concluding look. But also from a campaign that captured precisely the movements that have now entered the collective imagination of these sea creatures.
But the appeal doesn’t stop on the catwalks. Between red carpets, editorials and pop culture, mermaid inspiration keeps resurfacing.
This is also demonstrated by the aesthetics of Zara Larsson, a pop artist with a vibrant and ultra-colorful visual language, who among starfish, glitter and aquatic imagery brings back a more playful, modern and decidedly pop mermaid to the center.
And among the big names in fashion, it is impossible not to mention Thierry Mugler’s Fall/Winter 1997-1998 Haute Couture collection, Les Chimères, which transformed models into fantastic, hybrid creatures. A visionary universe where elements of insects, mermaids and mythological figures come together thanks to meticulous workmanship: scales, feathers, crystals and horsehair become the skin of a world suspended between reality and imagination. Mermaids, today more than ever, inhabit not only legend and the ocean depths, but our wardrobe (or at least the wardrobe of our dreams).
[📸 Courtesy of Chanel]
