‘I grew up in a small town outside of Boston, but my imagination always wandered,’ says Andria Mitsakos, the founder of cult Athenian boutique Anthologist. It’s no surprise, then, that the Greek-American Mitsakos eventually found her way to the motherland, settling in its ancient capital more than a decade ago. It was here she opened her concept store, which has now spread to the Cyclades — seasonal pop-ups are in place at luxury hideaways Cosme and Parilio on the island of Paros, handy for guests who find their suitcases lacking a stylish basket bag or chic cover-up. Her aim is to always champion artisans, not just from Greece, but from all over the world.
Andria Mitsakos © Thomas Gravanis
At first, Anthologist was a way for Mitsakos to share her obsessions: ‘Objects, textiles, jewellery — fragments gathered across time and place.’ It has since grown into a design studio, retail concept and storytelling platform, embedded in hotels across Greece, and slowly now, around the world’
Mitsakos’s early career was spent running her PR agency in New York, but her inherited love of design soon came to the fore. A chance meeting with the owners of tropical resort East Winds in Saint Lucia while they were staying at Cosme led to her first fully fledged design project: renovating their hotel. ‘The collaboration was born out of shared values: nostalgia, warmth, cultural depth. The owners had seen a story about me in Bloomberg and came by my shop one morning,’ explains Mitsakos. ‘We sat down to discuss the project and it grew from there. For me, designing hotels is never surface-level. It’s about creating a feeling: rituals that linger, uniforms that reflect ethos, retail that becomes memory.’
The construction period that followed was a far cry from cookie-cutter designs and bulk orders. Mitsakos was determined to keep the work within the Caribbean as much as possible, sourcing furniture from a factory she’d used before in the Dominican Republic and having the lighting she designed made by artisans on Saint Lucia. ‘I commissioned hand-woven lampshades in the rainy season, and we had to wait for the straw to dry. They were ready one here, one there. It’s not like ordering 30 at a time!’
She credits family members with helping to hone her magpie eye, along with decades spent hunting in markets and ateliers. ‘Training your eye is about patience, intuition and knowing when something carries soul. Travel is my eternal school. Every destination leaves an imprint: Mexico with its endless artistry and colour. Colombo with its magical batik. Lima with its baby alpacas. One trip can alter the direction of a whole collection.’
Mitsakos comes from a long line of creative matriarchs. Her mother, Stella, is still working as an interior designer at the age of 80. Her great-aunt was an antiques dealer in western Massachusetts and in her childhood Mitsakos would spend Sundays at her stall at a local flea market, learning to spot rare pieces and discovering what made them collectible. Her grandmother was a shoemaker; and her paternal grandmother had emigrated to America from Greece at the age of 15 and worked in a textile factory. ‘My childhood was filled with objects and textiles collected by my family, each one carrying a story. Those heritage fragments became my foundation: proof that design is memory made tangible,’ she says.
Anthologist at Parīlio
One of her biggest influences were family holidays to Antigua, where her mother would work with a ceramicist called Edric to create designs he’d bring to life, the product of which they’d pick up the following year. ‘I would join her on these coveted outings, when she would sit alongside Edric in his small, muddy, open-air studio. I remember the earthy humidity of the space so well. That scent was intoxicating to me,’ she recalls. ‘One thing sits in my mind: Edric was always barefoot. He said it connected him with the earth better. “Bare hands, bare feet,” he would say. I loved those visits — you’d have to tear me away from that muddy mess of beauty.’ The first ceramics collection for Anthologist was an ode to Stella and Edric’s work together.
Mitsakos’s mottos of ‘collect, don’t shop’ and ‘you don’t need many things, just special things’ have never felt timelier, as consumers continue to turn away from fast fashion, planned obsolescence and future landfill. Anthologist stores are stocked with handpicked jewellery, textiles, decorative objects, ready-to-wear clothing and furniture from artisans or makers Mitsakos loves first, and the relationship sets the design of a certain product in motion. Her criteria are ‘craftsmanship, cultural authenticity and a refusal to compromise on quality and their process’. Everything must ‘preserve heritage and yet feel utterly contemporary’.
The aim has always been to support cultural preservation, something so important, especially in Greece. It pains her to see lost arts dying out with elder artisans, because the next generation isn’t interested in carrying on the tradition. ‘When you buy something handmade, you’ve invested in not only someone’s talent and livelihood, but you’ve also bought a piece of their soul, which in turn becomes part of yours,’ she says.
Her work takes her to every corner of the globe, but she adores her adopted city. ‘Athens is endlessly inspiring — raw, modern, and restless. Life is more textural here,’ she tells me. ‘And the city really has duality: modern but ancient, buzzy and new yet old school at the same time.’ Among her other favourite places on Earth are Cairo (‘For its chaos’) and Mexico (‘For its purity’). Her love of travel was sparked by ‘the excitement of airports’ at a young age: ‘The sense of ritual and possibility when walking into that charged space. I fell in love with travel early — not just with destinations, but with the act of moving, discovering, and finding stories along the way.’
As for what’s next for Mitsakos, a major new retail space for Anthologist will open in Athens in 2026. ‘More hotel collaborations, certainly,’ she says. ‘Always new collections. And, inevitably, the next story waiting to be told.’
ANDRIA’S LITTLE BLACK TRAVEL BOOK
Favourite museum/gallery
The Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. My mother would always encourage me to go to a museum before going to a flea market, so I’d learn about what I see… ‘Educate the eye,’ she still says.
Favourite bar
Bar Fitzgerald at Hôtel Belles Rives, the rooftop bar at Hotel Grande Bretagne, Kronenhalle in Zurich, and any beach bar in Mexico.
Interiors you envy
My own when I’m travelling — I miss it! But really, Palais Bulles (the Bubble Palace) — Pierre Cardin’s round, futuristic, former home, designed by the Hungarian architect Antti Lovag.
Design decade you feel at home in
Italian design from the Seventies has been my go-to for a while now, especially when designing our showroom in Athens, but I also yearn for the Eighties for a lot of fashion. I collect YSL pieces from that era and I love wearing them. It feels so indulgent.
Architecture that awes you
The Parthenon, forever. It’s my daily gaze.
How do you unwind?
I always change my clothes immediately when I walk in the front door. I live in vintage lingerie: slips, kimonos, peignoir sets. I have a playlist that’s only binaural sounds mixed with some Tibetan monks. Or, I fly to Cairo.
Most regrettable holiday purchase
Unsurprisingly, it’s something I regret not buying — I saw a pair of fabulous bronze elephants in Siem Reap years ago and could only afford one at the time. I still regret it to this day. I tried to ring the shop, but it had sold already.
Your must-pack items
Kimonos; Seventies Italian maxi dresses in a great print; Fratelli Rossetti Hobo flats; a pair of gold boots I bought in a store in Mexico City where they shape the boot to your foot; a vintage slip that can be worn as a dress (add a big mohair sweater, a leather jacket or just bare it all); and a pair of black Tom Ford-era Gucci, kitten-heel mules.
Strangest hotel experience
Airport hotels always feel off to me. Nobody has figured this out yet. It always feels like you’re in another dimension.
Best beach you’ve ever found
In the late 1970s, riding on my father’s shoulders along Dickenson Bay in Antigua, my Mom painting watercolour under a thatched hut. Present day: there are some tiny coves in Greece, but I’ll never reveal where they are hidden — though they are always at the end of a very, very long dirt path… The harder to get to, the better they are.
It’s not a holiday without…
…a notebook. Ideas run freely when you can quiet your mind.
Go in search of your own artisanal finds in Anthologist-approved Greece, Mexico and Egypt, or meet more of our hotel lovers