Right at the beginning of his volume Vestire i sogni, Italian tailor Umberto Tirelli recounts how he came up, together 
with costume designer Piero Tosi, with one of the dresses Maria Callas wore in Pier Paolo Pasolini’s film Medea (1969), taken from Euripides’ eponymous tragedy.
Unsure about the historical period they should have taken inspiration from since Medea was, after all, a mythical character and to try and avoid falling into any stereotypes by creating unoriginal costumes inspired to ancient Greece, Tirelli and Tosi turned to research and fantasy.
Tosi avidly researched through different documents and cultures, analysing the traditions of ancient Mediterranean civilisations, the textures of filigree jewels, the mantillas of the Madonnas portrayed in the retablos, Sardinian folk costumes and Moroccan, Tunisian and African traditional dresses. Pasolini had given him an idea of what he wanted: the costumes had to mix elements taken from the most ancient civilisations and their traditions. But how to succeed in mixing all these different elements together? 
Tirelli came up with a magnificent idea: using materials traditionally employed in other fields, such as upholstery, and mixing them with other materials. One of the fabrics chosen was what we call in Italian “cencio di nonna” or waste linen canvas. The rigid waste canvas was matched with a lighter material, gauze, which Tirelli and Tosi bought in copious quantities from a hospital supplier.
But the experiments weren’t over yet and more researches were carried out to assemble the materials. Different fabrics were for example sewed together, put in a bath of glue, folded by hand and then dried in an oven.
The colours were also important: for the costumes of the Colchis people, Tosi chose natural and earthy colours such as brown and ochre; for the Corinthian costumes, he took inspiration from Pontorno and Rosso Fiorentino’s pinks, reds and greens.
One of the best bits out of Tirelli’s book is when he and Tosi suddenly feel scared to ask Maria Callas (Tirelli was a big fans of hers) to try on one of their costumes. Was it fair, they wondered, to dress such a diva in the rags they had devised? What would she think about them? Contrary to their expectations, at the dress rehearsals the legendary opera singer didn’t say a single word, but, as soon as she put on the elaborate piece of fantasy and craftsmanship Tosi and Tirelli had created, she felt she had transformed into the legendary witch of Colchis, straight out of Euripides’ work.
It's Medea’s amazing ritual costume - a sumptuous long dress worn with dozens of necklaces and completed by a mantilla-like headpiece - that is probably the most memorable outfit from this film. Medea’s gauze mantles and mantillas are also some of my favourite pieces. I like the way the gauze has been glued, concertinaed and dried. I also love the contrast between the costumes and Maria Callas’ rather artificial ‘60s look.
Medea wasn’t a huge success in Italy, but, believe it or not, the film launched a new trend: after it, waste canvas became a favoured choice for prêt-à-porter creations. Gauze instead has mainly been employed by costume designers working for the stage. Andrea Viotti favoured this material for two 1984 stage productions, Hamlet and Don Carlos: in both the cases he created costumes made of velvet and gauze. For the Hamlet costumes the gauze was dyed in different colours, layered, sewed together and then ripped, to release the different nuances of colour; for Don Carlos Viotti created a three piece costume in which the gauze was employed to create a spider's web effect over the velvet, as if the costumes had been kept in a wardrobe for centuries.
The Medea character was rather influential in the fashion world. During the 1998 Florence Biennale, ten Italian fashion houses were called to restore a film that for its style, atmospheres and costumes represented an inspiration for them. Romeo Gigli chose Medea, explaining how he had first seen Pasolini’s film when he was around twenty years old. At the time, he wondered why the Italian director had decided to tell a story of ancient times when young men and women all over the world were rebelling to the old traditions and adopting transgressive behaviours. Then Gigli understood: Medea was actually a revolutionary character, who wasn’t afraid of rebelling to conventions. Gigli isn’t the only designer who was somehow inspired by Medea.
Hussein Chalayan entitled his S/S 2002 collection “Medea”. The ragged and tattered dresses featured in the collection - a combination of second-hand garments and buried garments from his repertoire - are all characterised by the distressed aesthetic of the ragpicker. For this reason, Chalayan seems to indirectly evoke Tosi and Tirelli's work for Pasolini's film. After all, the maverick costume designer and the tailor
had turned Callas into an extraordinary ragpicker, creating for her hybrid costumes that will never cease to inspire.
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