Maria Grazia Chiuri’s 2022 Cruise collection for Dior has marvelled spectators at the Panathenaic Stadium in Athens.
The French fashion house’s creative director Maria Grazia Chiuri launched the inter-season, all Greek-inspired gowns and athletic wear runway show for Dior at the Panathenaic Stadium in Athens.
“The idea to show inside the stadium was my obsession, because I think it speaks about the relationship that the clothes have with the body — a body that is a performing body,” Chiuri said of the historic venue.
Models stomp the runway at the Dior fashion show in Athens (Photo: ARIS MESSINIS AFP)
The event in Athens “(blends) the power of heritage and contemporary inventiveness,” Dior says, using the peplos as a “key inspiration” for the collection.
“The peplos also is an element that allows the body to move freely, that evokes women in movement, and no one more than an athlete moves their body in a really active way. So my idea was to culminate all these elements inside the show.”
The 2022 Cruise collection was supported with the help of local artists, including tailor Arts Tzernovakis and the designs of artist Christiana Soul.
Dior’s 2022 Resort collection preview shot at the Panathenaic Stadium (Photo: Giovanni Giannoni/WWD)
The Panathenaic Stadium in Athens hosted a show on Thursday atypical to the type it’s used to, true to a popular and recycled trend of holding fashion shows at Greece’s ancient and historical sites.
The Central Archaeological Council has granted Dior prior access to shoot at the Odeon of Herodes Atticus, the Ancient Agora, the Temple of Poseidon in Sounio, and the Temple of Zeus in Nemea.
It follows mounting criticism over the way the Greek Government manages and preserves the country’s archaeological sites.
Dior also plans to shoot at the Acropolis as a 70-year anniversary tribute to Christian Dior’s haute couture collection.
The European Union (EU) has approved 30.5 billion euros ($48.062 billion) for Greece’s economic recovery plan in an announcement on Thursday.
Greece will receive 17.8 billion euros in grants and 12.7 billion euros in loans through to 2026.
“Today, I’m very happy to announce that the European Commission has decided to give its green light to Greece’s recovery and resilience plan, Greece 2.0,” the European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced at a ceremony under the Acropolis.
Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis made the announcement alongside the European Commission’s Ursula von der Leyen (Γ.Τ. Πρωθυπουργού/ Δημήτρης Παπαμήτσος)
The approval “follows a thorough assessment by the commission” of Greece’s plans, she announced while standing alongside Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis.
The total assistance from the EU equals to about 16 percent of Greece’s national output and there are hopes it will grow the economy by as much as 7 percentage points over the next six years to 2027.
Greece’s post-pandemic economic recovery plan is known as ‘Greece 2.0’ or ‘the Greek Plan’ (Photo: primeminister.gr)
The European Union’s approval now has to be supported by EU finance ministers next month to facilitate the disbursement of 4 billion euros to Greece for projects earmarked by the Greek plan.
Mitsotakis said the Greek plan consists of “175 critical investments, works and reforms”, in the environmental, employment, private investment, and digital reform sectors.
“Today marks the last act of the turbulence the pandemic brought and the start of the recovery plan,” Mitsotakis said.
“A fairer welfare means a stronger democracy.”
The Greek plan aims to recover from the blows dealt by the pandemic and improve the economy’s social and environmental footprint and make it more ‘digitalised’.
A 32-year-old pilot has reportedly confessed to murdering his British Greek wife and staging the crime scene at their home in Glyka Nera in northeastern Athens.
The pilot told investigators that he killed his wife following an argument and then staged the crime scene to support his story that she had been beaten and strangled by three robbers while he was tied to a chair.
He murdered his wife, Caroline Crouch, who was 12 years his junior, after she threatened to leave him and take their 11-month-old baby with her, according to sources.
The pilot was flown in from Alonissos to Athens’ Police Headquarters for a five-hour interrogation on Thursday after emerging as the Police’s chief suspect, according to reports.
Athens police headquarters.
He emerged as the suspect after three forensic findings found Crouch’s murder to be an “inside job”.
The key pieces of evidence were allegedly the data on the victim’s smart-watch; the fact that the memory cards had been removed from the CCTV cameras in the couple’s home; and activity on the victim’s cellphone during the time he claimed to be tied up.
The original report details that the “burglars” killed the family dog by hanging it from the staircase handrail, bound the pair with rope and tape, stole cash and jewellery, before the husband managed to crawl to his mobile phone and call the police.
He was the “only eyewitness to the crime” and emerged as the Police’s chief suspect on Thursday.
40 community volunteers from the St George Church in Rose Bay will gather at The Big Kitchen in Bondi for St George Hands’ annual Cooking for the Homeless day.
This is Irene Sen’s third year rallying volunteers to help chip in and says she delivers an average of 200 meals to the Greek Welfare Centre (GWC) Soup Kitchen in Newtown every Monday.
“We do about six events in a year,” Sen says.
“I can’t believe these young, 20-to-30 year-olds from the Rose Bay Church. They’re just so supportive and have a really good attitude,” she says.
St George Hands is an initiative that the St George Church in Rose Bay set up to give back to people in need. It helped deliver 180 meals to the Greek Welfare Centre (GWC) Soup Kitchen in Newtown in 2019.
Irene says the number of meals has now jumped to about 250.
St George Hands delivered 180 meals to the Greek Welfare Centre (GWC) in 2019 (Source: Facebook)
“Life is all about ‘take’ and giving back just feels so good for the soul,” she says. “It makes you feel human.”
George Kounaris helps oversee the cooking of the meals and ensures they’re ready to be delivered to around thirty to forty different charities, he says.
“Vinnies, Salvos, women’s and men’s refuges, youth centres, women’s domestic violence shelters” are just some of the different charities that can expect deliveries this year.
“We do about 4,500 meals a week out of this.”
That reflects a worrying increase in homelessness he says. He says that since the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of meals needed have almost doubled from 2,500 to 4,000.
“There’s a lot of people unemployed,” he says. “A lot of charities now creating care packs.”
“They’ll put dry goods in bags and put our meals so they get through a week.”
You can volunteer on Monday, June 21 at 36 Flood Street, Bondi from 6.30pm-8.30pm.
Dr Costas Costa is a general practitioner at Sydney’s Hurlstone Park Medical Centre who was recently honoured on the Queen’s Birthday Honours list with a Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) for his services to medicine.
However, Dr. Costa sends a clear message regarding the recognition in an interview with The Greek Herald.
“It’s great to get an award but it’s a bit sad that things are going the opposite way through everything I tried to achieve in a public health sense,” he tells me.
He clarifies that he’s “somewhat conflicted” about the honour.
An Order of Australia medal.(AAP: Paul Miller)
“It is difficult because anyone can come up to me and call me a hypocrite, couldn’t they?”, but says, “On the other hand, people are saying it’s not just for you, it’s for all those people that work with you, for all those organisations…”
“[The Federal Government is] rewarding the doctors that try to make the thing [sic] better but you’re not listening to them,” he says.
He tells me the irony isn’t lost on him that the Commonwealth is handing a general practitioner (GP) an honour while, at the same time, rolling back Medicare rebates.
“Medicare is being remanded as a second-class system for the poor. [The government] froze the rebate and they’re forcing the doctors to … go back to a private billing system except for the very poor people or the pensioners,” he says.
It’s not just the proposed Medicare reforms which reflect a disparity in healthcare access today, he says.
According to Dr Costa Australia is among the few rich countries yet to waive the COVID-19 intellectual property patent to help speed up the vaccine manufacture and rollout.
He goes on to draw parallels between the current COVID-19 vaccine patents to the patent on the anti-AIDS treatment zidovudine (AZT) in Africa during the HIV/AIDS pandemic of the 1980s.
Who is Dr. Costas Costa?
As a second-generation Cypriot Australian, Dr. Costa knows better than most how important it is to universalise healthcare, particularly for lower socio-economic communities.
His mother was a few months pregnant with Costa before she set out for the 13-and-a-half thousand kilometre boat voyage from Akari, Cyprus, to Australia.
“I was born six months after [my parents] arrived, so I’m pure Aussie if you like,” he jokes.
“I remember as a young person when our family struggled to go to the doctor.”
He took these experiences and put them at the forefront of his ethical medical practice, including his work with the “Save the Children” fund in Bangladesh and his practice in the days pre-Medicare.
“Naturally, for me being from Greek background, I fell into a Greek type of practice or cohort and obviously the Greeks at that time, going back 30 to 40 years, were all factory workers, labourers… the workers,” he says.
“Understanding their background, where they’re coming from, that’s very important for doctors.”
If there’s a way to define Costas’ medical practice, it’s his signature phrase to his patients.
“I always say to my patients, ‘I’ll give you these tablets. They’ll help you 20 per cent. The other 80 per cent is up to you’,” he tells me.
Costas is a lifetime member and strong supporter of the Cyprus Community Club in Sydney’s inner west suburb of Stanmore.
He says he’s fought tooth-and-nail to save the club’s site from “greedy developers”.
“The developers didn’t realise they were up against Cypriots,” he says.
“We’ve been done over by a lot bigger than them.”
The club has experienced turbulence since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, but has eventually raised millions through the historic Cyprus Capital fund to repay loans and save the club from bankruptcy, he says.
The value of the Club’s site in Stanmore just recently shot to somewhere between “$70 and $80 million” after the Inner West Council (IWC) gave the site gateway to rezone, Costa says.
He says the survival of the historic club means that younger generations can “continue that connection to language, culture, and the motherland Cyprus”.
Sydney’s Greek community is invited to attend a commemoration day and Greek barbeque fundraiser this Sunday, June 20, at the historic Saint Sophia Greek Orthodox Cathedral in Paddington.
The church is known as the first Greek Orthodox Cathedral of Australia and the Southern Hemisphere, and it has even been given State Heritage Status by the New South Wales Government.
The Cathedral’s hall was also a popular venue for the afternoon Greek schools dating back to the late 1920’s, and it was used by the then-Consul General Dr Emil Vrisakis to collect warm clothes and footwear to send to the Anzacs and Greeks who were defending Greece during WWII.
This weekend’s intergenerational Greek barbeque is being held for people to witness the restoration work which has been carried out at the Cathedral to date, including the cleaned interior and a plaque made from Pentelic Marble and donated by Euromarble.
The Greek Herald‘s sources say up to $900,000 has already been spent to restore the Cathedral, but about $150,000 is still required to replace the corroded steel windows with authentic period materials and improve the internal lighting.
If you’d like to see the restoration works, the barbeque is being held at St Sophia Greek Orthodox Cathedral on the Corner of Napier Street and South Dowling Street in Paddington from 12pm on Sunday, June 20.An earlier liturgy at 8am will also be held on the day.
Greek composer and bouzouki master, Stelios Vamvakaris, was one of the first musicians to deal with the common roots of rebetiko and blues.
On this day in 2019, Stelios passed away at the age of 72. To mark the day, we take a look back at his inspirational career.
Early Life and Music Career:
Stelios Vamvakaris, the second son of the pioneer of rebetiko Markos Vamvakaris, was born in Piraeus on March 2, 1947. He started playing music at the age of 12, with his father.
Stelios Vamvakaris is the second son of the pioneer of rebetiko Markos Vamvakaris.
During the many years of his artistic career, Stelios collaborated with important rebetiko musicians, such as Giannis Papaioannou, Vassilis Tsitsanis, Stratos Pagioumtzis and Stelios Perpiniadis, as well as with big names in folk, art and rock music, such as George Zambetas Gray, Vicky Moscholou, Lefteris Papadopoulos and George Dalaras.
In 1988, he recorded with the American blues player Louisiana Red the album ‘The Blues meets Rebetiko’ with 8 pieces of blues performed with bouzouki and baglama. In 1994, he wrote music for the album ‘Romantic Violators – Fantasy in Power,’ which stood out for its special sound.
During his career, he gave many concerts abroad performing his songs but also songs of his father.
Stelios passed away on June 17, 2019, at the age of 72.
Legacy and Death:
The artistic value of his particular style of music was also recognised by the international blues community. At a festival in Fallon, Sweden, he co-starred with John Lee Hooker and in 2003, at a London Blues Festival with Taj Mahal and Cesaria Evora. In 2010, he appeared at the Balkan Trafik Festival held in Brussels.
Apart from songs, Stelios also composed music for the cinema, as in the film of George Panousopoulos ‘One day at night,’ but also for plays. Many remarkable songs by him have not found their way into the discography.
Stelios passed away on June 17, 2019, at the age of 72.
The Centre for the Greek Language has announced the new period of the distance training program ‘Routes in Teaching Greek as a Second/Foreign Language’ for teachers in Greece and abroad.
The course begins on Monday, September 6, 2021 and lasts 10 months. Registrations are open from April 12, 2021 until June 30, 2021.
The program consists of the following eight modules, which cover all thematic areas of interest for the teacher of Greek as a second/foreign language:
Lesson planning, Classroom Management and Learning Strategies.
Teaching Grammar, Vocabulary and Pronunciation.
Teaching Languages to Young Learners.
Language Performance Assessment.
Computer Assisted Language Learning.
Aspects of Language (Language diversity, genres, and literary discourse).
Bilingualism: Language and Thought of the Bilingual Speaker.
When Cultures Converse at School: Intercultural Education Issues.
The program, which was first implemented in 2007, was awarded with the European Language Label. It is constantly updated and improved, while it offers flexibility in participation, since it is implemented entirely by distance learning and asynchronous teaching.
The participants enjoy 24-hour access to the material and discussion forums, in order to communicate with instructors and fellow participants, to exchange ideas, and engage in constructive dialogue.
One or two webinars take place in each unit, in real time, offering immediate live communication with the team of instructors.
Innovative features of the program include:
Three, at least, specialised instructors in each unit, who possess years of experience in the field, teach and supervise the participants and provide answers to their questions.
Implementation of the principles of distance learning.
The participants write essay papers in each unit under the guidance and support of the team of instructors.
Upon completion of the program, trainees are invited to an online teacher community, offering opportunities for continuous cooperation and exchange of information.
The program is addressed to anyone involved and/or interested in teaching Greek as a second/foreign language in Greece and abroad, provided he/she is a B.A. holder from departments of Greek philology, foreign language philologies, pedagogical studies, theological studies or other departments of Greek or equivalent foreign universities.
Candidates who have not completed tertiary education may also be admitted on certain conditions.
The Program “Routes in Teaching Greek as a Second/Foreign Language” is recognised as a distance training program (Government Gazette 862/Issue B/ 8-4-2014) and provides a 450-hour certified specialisation in teaching Greek as a second/foreign language.
Trainees who successfully complete the program can work in public and private institutions worldwide (indicatively, teaching centers, schools, universities and research institutes) that specialise in teaching Greek as a second/foreign language.
For all relevant information, such as registration and cost, please visit the registration website: www.greek-language.gr/routes.
On a cold, rainy night in Cromer, Sydney Olympic FC secured their spot in the FFA Cup Round of 32, nailing a convincing 2-0 victory against Manly United FC on Wednesday.
Both sides grabbed late wins in the NSW NPL on the weekend, with Olympic edging over the Sydney FC Youth NPL side and Manly claiming a 2-1 win against APIA Leichhardt. The teams are also separated by only two points in the competition.
Olympic lined up almost identically against Manly, replacing only Nicola Kuleski with Brendan Cholakian in the midfield.
Both teams looked strong out the gate applying strong defensive pressure, yet neither side sent any dangerous threats towards goal.
Sydney Olympic reach the round of 32 in The FFA cup. Photo: Steve Trikoulis @trikoulisphotography
The slow start to the game was turned around in the 18th minute after Tom Whiteside delivered a near-perfect ball, from his own box, to Mohammed Adam who was through on goal. The in-form striker shot it from the edge of the box, yet only after he was grabbed by Manly captain and defender Jimmy Oates. Oates received a red card for his error and Manly were brought down to 10 men.
Olympic made expert good use of the red card and free kick from outside the opposition’s box, delivering a set piece spectacle straight from the training ground onto Cromer Park.
Former Manly man Brendan Cholakian delivered a through ball to Fabio Ferreira, who was waiting unmarked beside the opposition’s defensive wall, who sent it straight past the keeper and into the back of the net.
Olympic’s second goal wasn’t too far away, with Monge taking the ball down the line with a pass from Ferreira. Monge laid it off to Adam who shot it towards goal, hitting a defender and deflecting into the net.
Sydney Olympic reach the round of 32 in The FFA cup. Photo: Steve Trikoulis @trikoulisphotography
Entering the second half with an extra man over their opponents, Olympic remained in control for the remaining minutes of the match. Olympic still had to deal with the individual talents of Dejan Pandurevic and Jack Fulton, who set up and sent some dangerous shots towards Olympic keeper Nicholas Sorras, yet the shot-stopper was determined to keep his good run of form.
A deflection potentially stopped Manly from claiming a much-needed goal, which had already wrong-footed Sorras, yet the ball rolled past the post. Manly’s best chances in the match came from corners, where Olympic struggled to clear the ball early, earning eight to Olympic’s three.
Olympic showed their commitment to victory, and hefty aggression, after finishing with six yellow cards. Both sides finished the match with four shots on target.
Ferreira was one of Olympic’s top performers on the night, sending multiple shots at the Manly keeper and ultimately claiming one goal. Whiteside also performed well to keep the Manly attackers from getting off any easy shots against Sorras.
Sydney Olympic will now move onto the FFA Cup Round of 32. The Belmore side has only reached the Round of 16 twice since 2014.
The six finalists in the $60,000 Miles Franklin Literary Award 2021 were announced on Wednesday night and among them is debut Greek Australian author, Andrew Pippos, with his novel Lucky’s.
Pippos’ book was inspired by his own family story: his ancestors came out from Greece and operated a Greek-Australian cafe in the small town of Brewarrina, NSW, for more than 80 years.
He tells The Australian that being a finalist for the literary award is a “dream.”
Andrew Pippos, left, author of Lucky’s, and Robbie Arnott, author of The Rain Heron. Credit: Belinda Rolland.
“I feel fantastic! I spent years writing this book and I didn’t even know if it would be published. To be short-listed for a big award is a dream,” Pippos told The Australian.
Pippos is among a relatively left-of-field shortlist for Australia’s most famous literary prize. He joins Aravind Adiga nominated for Amnesty, Robbie Arnott for The Rain Heron, Daniel Davis Wood for At the Edge of the Solid World, Amanda Lohrey for The Labyrinth and Madeleine Watts for The Inland Sea.
The six books on the 2021 Miles Franklin shortlist.
“In various ways each of this year’s short-listed books investigate destructive loss – of loved ones, freedom, self, and the environment,” State Library of NSW Mitchell Librarian and judging panel chair, Richard Neville, said after the announcement.
“There is beauty and joy to be found, and decency and hope, largely through the embrace of community but, as the shortlist reminds us, often community is no match for more powerful forces.”
Longlisted novelists Gail Jones, who has been on the award’s longlist or shortlist six times, and previous Miles Franklin winner, Sofie Laguna, missed out this year.
The winner of the award will be announced on July 15.
