Almost Unimaginable Beauty and Opulence: the Paradise Pleasure Gardens of Ancient Persia

Nine paradise gardens in Iran are collectively listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site, the Eram Garden (pictured above) built in the 12th century is one of the most splendid.  

By Peter Edwell

Some of the most enduring ancient myths in the Persian world were centred around gardens of almost unimaginable beauty and opulence.

The biblical Garden of Eden and the Epic of Gilgamesh’s Garden of the Gods are prominent examples. In these myths, paradise was an opulent garden of tranquillity and abundance.

But how did this concept of paradise originate? And what did these beautiful gardens look and feel like in antiquity?

Pairi-daēza is where we get the word ‘paradise’

The English word “paradise” derives from an old Persian word pairidaeza or pairi-daēza, which translates as “enclosed garden”.

The origins of paradise gardens lie in Mesopotamia and Persia (modern Iraq and Iran).

The Garden of the Gods from the Epic of Gilgamesh from about 2000 BCE is one of the earliest attested in literature.

Some argue it was also the inspiration for the legend of the Garden of Eden in the book of Genesis. In both of these stories, paradise gardens functioned as a type of utopia.

When the Achaemenid kings ruled ancient Persia (550–330 BCE), the development of royal paradise gardens grew significantly. The paradise garden of the Persian king, Cyrus the Great, who ruled around 550 BCE, is the earliest physical example yet discovered.

During his reign, Cyrus built a palace complex at Pasargadae in Persia. The entire complex was adorned with gardens which included canals, bridges, pathways and a large pool.

One of the gardens measured 150 metres by 120 metres (1.8 hectares). Archaeologists found evidence for the garden’s division into four parts, symbolising the four quarters of Cyrus’s vast empire.

Technological wonders

A feature of paradise gardens in Persia was their defiance of often harsh, dry landscapes.

This required ingenuity in supplying large volumes of water required for the gardens. Pasargadae was supplied by a sophisticated hydraulic system, which diverted water from the nearby Pulvar River.

The tradition continued throughout the Achaemenid period. Cyrus the Younger, probably a descendant of Cyrus the Great, had a palace at Sardis (in modern Turkey), which included a paradise garden.

According to the ancient Greek writer, Xenophon, the Spartan general Lysander visited Cyrus at the palace around 407 BCE.

When he walked in the garden, astounded by its intricate design and beauty, Lysander asked who planned it. Cyrus replied that he had designed the garden himself and planted its trees.

Perhaps the ultimate ancient paradise garden was the legendary Hanging Gardens of Babylon.

In one tradition, the gardens were built by the neo-Babylonian King, Nebuchadnezzar II (605–562 BCE).

The gardens were so magnificent and technologically advanced they were later counted among the Seven Wonders of the World.

Perhaps the ultimate ancient paradise garden was the legendary Hanging Gardens of Babylon. mikroman6/Getty Images

In a later Roman account, the Hanging Gardens consisted of vaulted terraces resting on cube-shaped pillars.

Flowing water was a key feature, with elaborate machines raising water from the Euphrates river. Fully grown trees with vast root systems were supported by the terraces.

In another account, the Hanging Gardens were built by a Syrian king for his Persian wife to remind her of her homeland.

When the Sasanian dynasty (224–651 CE) came to power in Persia, its kings also built paradise gardens. The 147-hectare palace of Khosrow II (590–628 CE) at Qasr-e Shirin was almost entirely set in a paradise garden.

The paradise gardens were rich in symbolic significance. Their division into four parts symbolised imperial power, the cardinal directions and the four elements in Zoroastrian lore: air, earth, water and fire.

The gardens also played a religious role, offering a glimpse of what eternity might look like in the afterlife.

They were also a refuge in the midst of a harsh world and unforgiving environments. Gilgamesh sought solace and immortality in the Garden of the Gods following the death of his friend Enkidu.

According to the Bible, God himself walked in the Garden of Eden in the cool of the evening.

But in both cases, disappointment and distress followed.

Gilgamesh discovered the non-existence of immortality. God discovered the sin of Adam and Eve.

Paradise on Earth

The tradition of paradise gardens continued after the Islamic conquest of Persia in the 7th century CE.

The four-part gardens (known as chahar-bagh) of the Persian kingdoms were also a key feature of the Islamic period.

The Garden of Paradise described in the Quran comprised four gardens divided into two pairs. The four-part garden became symbolic of paradise on Earth.

The tradition of paradise gardens has continued in Iran to the present day.

Nine paradise gardens in Iran are collectively listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site. The Eram garden, built in about the 12th century CE, and the 19th-century Bagh-e Shahzadeh are among the most splendid.

Today, the word “paradise” evokes a broader range of images and experiences. It can foster many different images of idyllic physical and spiritual settings.

But the magnificent enclosed gardens of the ancient Persian world still inspire us to imagine what paradise on Earth might look and feel like.

Peter Edwell, Associate Professor in Ancient History, Macquarie University

How Self-Taught, Self-Made Mavericks Vivienne Westwood and Rei Kawakubo Redefined Punk

Rihanna wearing Commes des Garcons by Rai Kawakubo at The Met Gala in 2017. Photograph: Francois Durand/Getty 

By Sasha Grishin

Vivienne Westwood and Rei Kawakubo are two fashion designers who redefined “the look” of fashion on the street from the 1970s onwards.

They were born a year apart in the early 1940s, one in Derbyshire in England, the other in Tokyo in Japan. They were both largely self-taught, self-made mavericks who contributed to, and redefined, the punk scene in the 60s and 70s. Their use of unconventional materials and designs shocked the fashion establishment and helped to establish alternative realities of accepted dress codes.

The great achievement of many revolutionary National Gallery of Victoria exhibitions is the strategy of juxtaposing two vibrant artistic personalities, whereby a new and unexpected reality is created that allows us to establish a fresh perspective.

World’s End, London (fashion house), Vivienne Westwood (designer), Malcolm McLaren (designer), outfit from the Savage collection, spring–summer 1982. Pillar Hall, Olympia, October 22 1981. Photo © Robyn Beeche

Westwood and Kawakubo are household names in the fashion industry. But by bringing them together and clustering their works under five thematic categories, new insights appear.

It is a spectacular selection of over 140 key and signature pieces drawn from the growing holdings of the NGV supplemented with strategic loans from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Victoria & Albert Museum, London; Palais Galliera, Paris; the Vivienne Westwood archive; and the National Gallery of Australia, among others.

Punk and provocation

Westwood, subsequently Dame Vivienne Isabel Westwood, initially in collaboration with Malcolm McLaren of Sex Pistols fame, helped to mould and dress the London punk scene.

For her, dress was never ideologically neutral but a lightning rod for social change.

Vivienne Westwood (right) with the model Jordan (Pamela Rooke) and another punk, London, 12 April 1977. Photo © Tim Jenkins / WWD / Penske Media via Getty Images

Pornographic slogans, emblems anchored in fetish practices and sadomasochism, and dresses made of plastics and supplemented with safety pins and chains subverted the comfortable status quo and allowed her fashion sense to penetrate into the middle classes.

What was once outrageous became something daringly respectable.

Kawakubo was born into an academic family and came to fashion design when making her own clothing in the 1960s under the label Comme des Garçons (“like the boys”) in Tokyo.

Conceived as anti-fashion, sober and severe, she made largely monochrome garments – black, dark grey and white – for women, with frayed, unfinished edges, holes and asymmetric shapes.

A men’s line was added in 1978. The number of outlets in Japan grew into the hundreds. Later, her designs established a strong presence in Paris.

The themes that bring the two fashion designers together in this exhibition include the opening section, Punk and Provocation. Both designers drew on the ethos of punk with its desire for change and the rejection of old ways.

Breaking orthodoxies

A second section is termed Rupture for the conscious desire to break with convention, whether it be Westwood’s Nostalgia of Mud collection of 1983 or Kawakubo’s Not Making Clothes collection of 2014.

There is a strongly expressed desire to break with the prevailing orthodoxies.

World’s End, London (fashion house), Vivienne Westwood (designer), Malcolm McLaren (designer) Outfit from the Nostalgia of Mud collection, autumn–winter 1982–83. Pillar Hall, Olympia, London, 24 March 1982. Photo © Robyn Beeche

A third section, Reinvention, hints at a postmodernist predilection of both artists to delve into traditions of art history and from unexpected sources, such as Rococo paintings, revive elements from tailoring traditions, ruffles and frills.

Although both artists are rule breakers, they do not act from a position of ignorance. It is from a detailed, and at times pedantic, knowledge of garments from the past.

Comme des Garçons, Tokyo (fashion house), Rei Kawakubo (designer) Look 2, from the Smaller is Stronger collection, autumn–winter 2025. Paris, 8 March 2025. Image © Comme des Garçons. Model: Mirre Sonders

In the late 1980s, Westwood revived English tweeds and Scottish tartans. Kawakubo drew on the basics of traditional tailoring in menswear and applied it to unorthodox patterns and materials in her garments for women.

The ‘ideal’ body

A fourth section, The Body: Freedom and Restraints, perhaps most problematically challenges the conventions of idealised female beauty and the objectification of the female body.

It is argued in the exhibition that Westwood’s Erotic Zones collection (1995), and Kawakubo’s The Future of Silhouette (2017–18), may be viewed as attempts to redefine the female body.

Sarah Jessica Parker wearing a Vivienne Westwood wedding gown on the set of Sex and the City: The Movie, New York City, October 12 2007. Photo © James Devaney / WireImage via Getty Images

Kawakubo’s Body meets dress-Dress meets body collection, presented in 1996, systematically interrogates boundaries between bodies and garments. Westwood, at a similar time, played with padding and compression in her designs to question the ideals of a sexual, “ideal” body.

The final section of the exhibition is appropriately termed The Power of Clothes. This returns us to the recurring theme of employing fashion to make a statement concerning social change, whether this be the punk revolution or protests connected with climate change.

Installation view of Westwood | Kawakubo on display from 7 December 2025 to 19 April 2026, at NGV International, Melbourne. Vivienne Westwood Look 19, Jacket, shirt, knickers, bum pad, leggings, hat, crop, boots, 1994 and Look 34 Cape, shirt, corset, and boots and hat 1994 and Look 78, Dress, bum pad and shoes, 1994 from the On Liberty collection, 1994-1995. Courtesy of Vivienne Westwood Heritage. Photo: Sean Fennessy

Through their work, both Westwood and Kawakubo argue fashion is a political act and make broader social statements through their garments, particularly women’s wear.

Both fashion designers were prominent polemicists. As quoted in the exhibition, Westwood in 2011 declared,

I can use fashion as a medium to express my ideas to fight for a better world.

Kawakubo is quoted as saying in 2016,

Society needs something new, something with the power to provide stimulus and the drive to move us forward […] Maybe fashion alone is not enough to change our world, but I consider it my mission to keep pushing and to continue to propose new ideas.

This exhibition will be seen as historically significant and it is accompanied with a weighty catalogue. The NGV has established major collections of over 400 pieces of Westwood’s and Kawakubo’s work that lays the foundation for any further serious exploration of fashion from this period anywhere in the world.

Westwood | Kawakubo is at the National Gallery of Victoria until April 19.

Sasha Grishin, Adjunct Professor of Art History, Australian National University

Berlin Fashion Week: Backstage at Dagger Autumn/Winter 2026 Photographed by Jay Zoo

Berlin Fashion Week: Play Hard, Land Softly - A Study of Youth and Identity in Luke Rainey’s AW26 Dagger Collection

An urban fallen angel of skateboarders, in ripped jeans and holding a bottle of beer, stood centre of the runway during Luke Rainey's Dagger show in Berlin. All photographs and cover by Jay Zoo for DAM 

Dagger’s new Autumn/Winter 2026 collection called Play Hard, was a standout at Berlin Fashion Week, and a personal reckoning for designer Luke Rainey, whose work encompasses his own early experiences of having to make something from very little, writes Jeanne-Maire Cilento. Photography by Jay Zoo

Starting out with t-shirts printed with 

quotable statements, the designer has 

built a sophisticated label.

LIVING in Berlin for the past five years, Northern Irish designer Luke Rainey named his label Dagger after a ritual blade associated with change and transition, built on the idea that identity is forged under pressure.

Rainey launched the brand in 2020 at a moment of rupture, turning professional rejection into motivation and imprinting that defiance into his work. 

"Each look is rooted in personal memory, reflecting resilience, freedom and creativity shaped through scarcity," the designer says. "Play Hard is not about perfection, but about rough edges, fragility and the strength found in community." 

Growing up in a coastal town in Northern Ireland, he learned early that style wasn’t about polish but survival. Skateboarding offered a sense of agency, friendship and a raw, resourceful mindset that still drives the designer's approach. It gave him a shared language and a way to belong when options were thin. 

"Play hard is a love letter to growing up in Portrush, a working-class seaside town," the designer says. "Surrounded by boarded-up arcades and harsh coastal weather, skateboarding became an escape, a culture and a way to form identity when opportunity was limited." 

The strength of Luke Rainey's work lies in his evocation of youth and perseverance, a reminder that the most compelling fashion often comes from necessity rather than excess

Growing up skateboarding in a small town in

Northern Ireland is key to Rainey's designs. 

This season, Rainey channels memories of freezing weather, closed storefronts, and the restless energy of youth searching for release. 

The designs feel protective and worn-in, created for movement and endurance. Textures are tough, silhouettes strong, and details deliberately imperfect, reflecting a world shaped by a small range of options and shared ingenuity.

"The collection draws from winter nights at home, empty arcades, distant sounds, fog and flashing lights, capturing a feeling that is both beautiful and unsettling," explains the designer. 

The strength of Luke Rainey's work lies in his evocation of youth and perseverance, a reminder that the most compelling fashion often comes from necessity rather than excess. 

Scroll to see more highlights from Dagger's AW26 collection at Berlin Fashion Week