The great soprano Maria Callas still inspires as a fashion icon decades after her death.
At an intimate party in Soho recently, the designer Erdem Moralıoğlu introduced a screening of Maria (the Pablo Larraín-directed biopic centred around the last days of Maria Callas’ tumultuous life starring Angelina Jolie). As Moralıoğlu explained to his audience, including friends designed Christopher Kane and actress Laura Bailey, the great soprano Callas had directly inspired his most recent runway collection, specifically the “almost pagan” costume she had worn on stage at La Scala in Milan in 1953 for her role as Medea.
More than 40 years after Callas’s premature death (from a heart attack at just 53), the Greek-American opera singer remains an eternal fascination for fashion fans and creatives, not only for her voice, but also for her extraordinary visual impact. Marina Abramovic, who performed her radical, experimental opera 7 Deaths of Maria Callas at the ENO in 2023, did so outfitted in spectacular costumes by Riccardo Tisci.
Model Anna Cleveland (daughter of Pat) posed as a latter-day Callas on the cover of Vogue Greece in tribute to “La Divina”, a century after the singer’s birth. And according to Marina Raphael, a rising 20-something Greek fashion designer, whose handbags are worn by the likes of Alicia Keys, Callas “embodies an elegance that transcends eras … From her structured gowns to her signature pearls, Callas’ wardrobe echoed her artistry – a blend of strength and vulnerability that continues to influence fashion narratives today.”
Small wonder then that Maria is being hailed as one of the most anticipated films of the year – not only for Jolie’s poignant bravura performance for which she earned a Golden Globe nomination, but also for its costumes. Italian costume veteran Massimo Cantini Parrini created more than 60 looks for Jolie to wear in the film.
“I had a strong connection to Callas before working on the film,” Cantini Parrini tells me from Los Angeles. “Because I’m Italian, because I love opera, because I love divas. I’ve always been a fan of Callas, from when I was very, very young.”
Some of the dresses worn by Jolie in the film are archive pieces. Others are meticulous recreations of well-documented Callas dresses – the black and ivory duchesse evening gown “embroidered at the waist with little balls of glass” which Callas wore to a party at The Dorchester when she was wooed by Aristotle Onassis is a case in point. Likewise, the sinuous 1970s sheath dress with a translucent cloak of navy blue chiffon, as seen on the striking poster for the film, was a painstakingly faithful recreation by Cantini Parrini’s team, from images of the gown Callas wore for her very last live performance on the stage at the Royal Festival Hall in London in 1973.
For the scenes towards the end of Callas’ life, Cantini Parrini was required to rely on his own imagination.
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Advertise with NZME.One of Cantini Parrini’s favourite sartorial imaginings was the sweeping crochet dressing gown that he designed for Jolie’s Callas to wear in her Parisian apartment in the last days of her life. To create this piece, Cantini Parrini researched a particular 16th-century crochet stitch that would give the gown a lightness and airiness and tasked “an old lady knitter in Rome” with crafting the finished garment. He admits he was somewhat finicky with his adjustments and the robe took two months in all to complete, but Jolie loved it so much, Cantini Parrini is arranging for another identical one to be crocheted for his leading actress “as a present”.
How did Cantini Parrini find working with Jolie? “She was so nice to me, from the first fitting when I showed her all my drawings and fabric samples. She likes costumes. You know she has an atelier in New York [for her purpose-driven fashion line Atelier Jolie], so she likes playing around with costumes. You know she loves my job, so we were very close, she didn’t complain about anything!”
Fashion was also immensely important to Callas, who used it to armour herself as an artist in the viperish arena of international opera stardom. Born into humble circumstances in Depression-era New York, she moved to Greece in 1937 as a young teenager (where her mother forced Callas and her sisters to perform for German soldiers for money during the war, as depicted in a deeply uncomfortable flashback scene in Larraín’s film).
From the time she became an independent person, Callas deployed clothing – and fabulous jewels – to create her professional persona as the great “La Divina”. She was famously a client of the formidable, though now almost forgotten, Italian couturier Madame Biki. It’s said that Callas bought at least 24 fur coats, 40 suits, 200 dresses, 150 pairs of shoes and 300 hats from Biki in her lifetime (though not before being asked to lose 27kg before Biki would deign to work with her). Yves Saint Laurent was another designer Callas favoured, one referenced in Maria by Cantini Parrini, who created a YSL-esque “Ballet Russes” ensemble of tunic dress and trousers for Jolie to wear in the poignant concert hall scenes where the soprano tries to find her voice one last time.
Notably, Cantini Parrini is a vintage fashion enthusiast himself, with a vast personal collection, including one of Callas’ own dresses created by the formidable Madame Biki (though he only discovered the provenance by chance). “I found a brown dress of hers many years ago. We didn’t use it for the movie, but it was an inspiration for me. I was simply very lucky. I bought this vintage dress because it was by Biki. When I brought it home after I bought it, I found in the hem of the dress a label with really tiny writing saying ‘Madame Callas’ and a number. I was so shocked to find it.”
It’s a goosebump-inducing story that prompts me to ask Cantini Parrini if he thought fashion made Callas happy? “I guess yes,” he replies after a moment’s consideration. “Because in the 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, fashion designers didn’t give dresses away, it didn’t work like that. She chose it, she bought it, she became an icon because she was dressing her own style, her own soul. She wasn’t borrowing clothes from a stylist.”
He adds that it is impossible to compare the impact of Callas’ visual identity with stars of today, who pick and mix their outfits from any era, any designer. “Callas is like Audrey Hepburn, or Sophia Loren,” he continues, [those indelible looks that define an era] “don’t really exist anymore.”
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Advertise with NZME.In some ways Maria strikes a maudlin note, “Maria Callas was an independent lady, but she suffered a lot for love, she didn’t have a child and she was so lonely,” says Cantini Parrini. But as the film’s operatic sequences (which blend original recordings with Jolie’s voice) and the spectacular costumes go to show, the legend of Callas will never fade. Viva la diva indeed!
Maria is in New Zealand theatres from January 30.
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