La Bohemia Of Mykonos: The Decades Of Pure Beauty

When I was little my mother used to tell me fairy tales about handsome princes who traveled to isolated parts of the world so they could live like simple humans. ‘They just needed to take off their expensive clothes and walk barefoot on the sand,’ she said. But, actually, it was not a fairy tale she had in mind. It was an island, whitewashed under the Greek sun. It was Mykonos.

My mother first visited the island in the ’70s, when she got engaged to my father. At that time, the ships would not go to any port. The people were transferred from the coast to smaller boats, and the first thing they saw were rocks and some small, white houses. Fishermen and donkeys carried the flour from the windmills. At that time, nothing on the island reminded anyone of parties, lights, luxuries, or drunk people on the streets. It was just nature, pure, beautiful, and great in its simplicity!

The ’50s

The ’60s

The cosmopolitan magazines and the famous newspapers around the world began to mention Mykonos as a unique destination. Pictures of popular actors like Marlon Brando, Grace Kelly, and Richard Burton together with the Greek actress Melina Mercouri, showing how much they enjoyed their summers in Mykonos, made the best publicity the island could ever dream of. Jackie Kennedy visited Mykonos, too, eventually, in 1961. It was, of course, love at first sight! Aristoteles Onassis, owner of Olympic Airlines, constructed the first airport on the island. Konstaninos Karamanlis, the young Prime Minister of Greece, also fell in love with Mykonos back then. Until the end of his days, he returned every summer to spend his holidays in the simplest way, together with his beloved Mykonian friends.

The ’70s

In the 1970s, gay couples discovered Mykonos. On the island, nobody judged them. The people there were so easy-going that even Elizabeth Taylor or Rita Hayworth could walk by them in the streets and they would not pay attention. Rich people, like Soraya, the so-called ‘sad princess,’ used to come to Mykonos to ‘feel free’ again. Poets, singers, fashion designers, actors, and models… they all loved Mykonos for this liberating atmosphere and made it their own shelter in the middle of the Aegean sea.

‘You would see the most beautiful girls and boys of the world here, with magnificent bodies, messy hair, passing by almost naked. They may have been princes or businessmen or Hollywood stars, but here they were walking around like the poor, totally care-free, totally happy.’ My mother still remembers those days as among the best periods she has ever witnessed.
Whenever I read about the crazy prices of the restaurants, the cheap entertainment, the people that open bottles of champagne for low quality singers, and the young ones, often dragged, screaming ‘Mykonooooooos,’ I wish I could travel back in time. I wish I could stroll around the beaches of Mykonos with a donkey, among charming foreigners, with no more luxuries than the sun, the rocks, and the big blue…
By Maro Zouganeli

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