Rachel Smythe's Lore Olympus is the most popular comic on Webtoons with over a billion views. In one of her Q & As Smythe talks about her process for creating the aesthetic for her character's outfits: "I have always been interested in clothing and fashion. I mainly just pick outfits I would like to wear. I feel like most of my designs come from distant memories of outfits that I've seen before." The clothing of Lore Olympus is playing on the mixing of cultures and time periods, borrowing from anime, classical mythology, the Roaring Twenties, and present-day American styles.
Fashion in Lore Olympus pushes stories along and gives the reader a sense of emotional topography. Smythe's expressive, whimsical animation style lets the clothes behave like characters of their own. Here are some of the best outfits from the series so far.
10 Eros's Wings
Eros grows into one of Persephone's closest friends and champions in Olympus City, first by bribing his way into their home with pastries, then because of his natural intuition about Persephone's crush, and finally, because of the role, he takes as her protector and secret-keeper. Eros's wings have just as much character as he does.
They change in texture, size, and shape based on his emotions, or disappear entirely. In his first meeting with Psyche, Smythe makes a sly reference to his depiction in Greek pottery.
9 Psyche's Harvest Soul Crop Top
Lore Olympus's Psyche arc follows is derived from a classical myth of Pysche as told by Apuleius (2nd c. CE). It's been described as a proto-Cinderella story. In Apuleius's version as in Smythe's, Aphrodite spitefully sends her son to punish Pysche for being worshiped like a god on earth for her beauty, but, because she's so beautiful, Eros himself falls in love with her. Pysche's stepsisters, also jealous, convince Pysche her lover is probably a shapeshifting monster and urge her to reveal his true nature while he's asleep.
The crop top provides some levity to an otherwise tragic scene of betrayal and sabotage. The mortals of Smythe's webcomic wear period clothing from the Greek Archaic and Classical periods while the gods switch between classically-inspired "old-fashioned" clothing and modern contemporary outfits. Here, the crop top contrasts with Psyche's own plain, classical wardrobe but also that of her sisters.
8 Artemis's Athleisure Wear
Artemis fills the role of a protective but clueless roommate in Persephone's life. Her twin Apollo spends countless episodes emotionally terrorizing Persephone right under Artemis's nose.
Artemis's outfits and the conversations around them evoke many important themes from the webcomic: the way her athleisure wear marks her as feminine and sporty contrasts her with the older, more conservative Goddesses of Eternal Maidenhood. Apollo's snide remarks about how revealing his sister's clothing give the reader insight into the way that he sexualizes women by antiquated and sexist standards of dress.
7 Allecto's Lively Hairdo
Allecto and her fellow gorgons occupy the role of impish henchmen in Lore Olympus--in the same vein as Lock, Shock, and Barrel from Nightmare Before Christmas.
Whenever they're in the frame, what really steals the show is their incredibly expressive hair made of snakes. The gorgon's hair is a play on the pathetic fallacy trope, making an inert object into an active demonstration of the character's emotional state.
6 Hades's Brunch Ensemble
"All the fine suits in the world," someone says of Hades, "can't hide the fact that you stink of death." Hades has a reputation for being stiff and formal, reflected in his sartorial choices. He wears primarily black--suits, business attire--and rarely alters from this uniform throughout the series, except at key moments in his relationships with Minthe and Persephone.
In one of the early meet-cute scenes with Persephone, Hades and she agree to go to brunch together and he puts on an impossibly cool ensemble: a sleek black suit with a long blue scarf, round sunglasses (which never return in the series). There's also something happening here to play off of Persephone's classic Golden Age Hollywood look as she strolls to his car decked out in fur.
5 Thetis In The Office
Possibly the outfit that most perfectly illustrates Thetis's power and allure is when we see her--unexpectedly--flirting with Zeus in the office, her clothes and hair disheveled. Her ruffled demi bra, simple white collared button-down, shiny tight black pencil skirt, hair up in a messy bun.
Thetis plays one of the thoroughly ghastly characters in Lore Olympus. Minthe's emotionally abusive frenemy is deadset on sleeping her way into a powerful relationship with one of the Olympians. She has a range of memorable outfits as one of the two characters cast in the traditional former sorority girl, queen bee tropes. Stephanie Talmage's 2017 profile of Greek life fashion and identity is required reading for understanding Thetis and Minthe.
4 The Fates' Retro Get Up
Eighties couture is a running gag in Rachel Smythe's webcomic, a shorthand aesthetic for ancient history. In flashbacks, the divine is sometimes depicted wearing brightly-colored neon jackets with big shoulder pads, but the Fates, presumably because they are the most ancient beings in the pantheon, have never changed their look.
Lachesis makes for a bold, distinctive look in a webcomic replete with good taste. Her inattention to current fashion trends has at this moment landed her--unintentionally--back into vogue with this very hipster look. The outfit codes her instantly as anachronistic, or at least nostalgic, and a little bit sassy.
3 Hera at the Club
Hera is by far the god with the most expansive wardrobe in Olympus and her looks draw from a wide variety of eras and styles, making homages to looks from the Golden Age of Cinema, including more than one iconic Audrey Hepburn outfit (cf. her penchant for conjuring cigarette holders), but her most distinctive dress may be the one she wears to confront her husband and his two brothers at their "brunch" at a strip club.
Her midnight blue cloak, bejeweled with light blue beads, long gloves, a queenly diadem, matching heavy blocky earrings, short-cropped hair done in a rope braid updo makes for a futuristic-looking, otherworldly outfit. The hair and clothing code her as imperious, mature, and all-business in contrast to the performers on stage, scantily clad, hair long and undone, and made up.
2 Hecate's Tuxedo
In Greek mythology, Hecate is one of the searchers for the abducted Persephone, so it makes sense that she figures prominently in this story as a protector figure. Even when she's sleeping, she wears elaborate ball gowns.
Everything about the way that Hecate dresses screams competence, polish, and a keen sense for the dramatic--not to mention a keen sense of Queer androgynous fashion sense. Simon Doonan's book from 2019 is worth your time.
1 Hera's Fur Coat
In Episode 7, "A Very Good Boy," Hades gives Persephone a returned fur coat with buttons made of diamonds that he purchased for Hera's birthday. The coat is the first gift of their courtship and its fate is ultimately sealed in Ep 47, "Needed," when Hestia confronts Persephone, who's returned home after riding high from the first day of her internship in the Underworld. As Hades writes Persephone a hypothetical letter about his feelings for her and his unwillingness to part from Minthe, the coat is confiscated in order to show that Persephone is still serious about becoming a "goddess of eternal maidenhood."
This coat is such an emotionally complex object of Hades and Persephone's relationship. It's a hand-me-down from another failed relationship, given to a young goddess by an older, more experienced god with unclear intentions on the first night of their meeting. The coat is made of fur, connecting it to the land and the hunt, which is a mark of the maiden goddess, Artemis in Greek mythology, but it also hearkens to Hades's love of dogs. The fur coat's resemblance to a cloud might trigger associations for some readers of another famous cloud outfit from the Roman epic poem The Aeneid by Virgil.