Mary Katrantzou was born in Athens in January 1983, the daughter of an interior designer and a father trained in textile engineering. In 2003 she went to the Rhode Island School of Design to study architecture, then transferred to Central Saint Martins in London, completing her BA in 2005 and her MA in 2008.
While still a student she sold prints to Bill Blass. After her BA she turned from interiors to fashion prints and, working with Sophia Kokosalaki in 2006, built the portfolio that took her onto the Saint Martins MA in fashion textiles. Her graduation collection opened the MA show at London Fashion Week in February 2008 and set out her signature: trompe-l'oeil prints of oversized jewellery on bonded-jersey dresses, giving the illusion of neckpieces far too heavy to wear, accompanied by replica jewellery in wood and metal.
She showed her first ready-to-wear collection that autumn and received British Fashion Council NEWGEN support for six seasons. Her first full collection, Autumn/Winter 2009, numbered only nine dresses but won 15 stockists, including Browns, Joyce and Colette. Her label went on to sell in more than 200 stores in 47 countries, among them Selfridges, Harvey Nichols, Barneys, Neiman Marcus and 10 Corso Como.
Collaborations followed: Topshop in 2011, which sold out within days; Longchamp bags in 2012; and adidas from 2014. In 2017 she sold a minority stake to Yu Capital. She marked ten years with a show at the Roundhouse in 2018, and in 2019 returned to Athens to show Spring/Summer 2020 in support of ELPIDA, the children's cancer charity.
Her honours include the Swiss Textiles Award (2010), the British Fashion Award for Emerging Talent in womenswear (2011), Young Designer of the Year at the Elle Style Awards (2012), the BFC/Vogue Designer Fashion Fund (2015) and the British Fashion Awards' New Establishment award (2015).
In April 2024 she became Bulgari's first creative director for leather goods and accessories. The Bulgari role was created for her, following several collaborations with the Roman jeweller, and she continues to run her own label alongside it. She resists the maximalist label often attached to her. "I think of myself more as a purist than a maximalist," she told Cultured in 2026. "I came into fashion via architecture, and later via textile design." Her brief at Bulgari is to bridge jewellery and bags. In spring 2026 she launched the Icons Minaudière collection, ten jewel-like evening bags in five designs, each reworking a house symbol: Serpenti, with hand-enamelled scales drawn from a 1968 watch; Tubogas, inspired by an archive image of the watch wrapped around an egg; Monete, after an ancient Roman coin; Divas' Dream, set with malachite, amethyst and mother-of-pearl; and Bvlgari Bvlgari, in a three-tone mother-of-pearl intarsia. None of them will hold a phone. "Of course it's a treasure," she said, "but that doesn't mean not to enjoy it." The campaign, photographed by Ethan James Green, featured Isabella Rossellini, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Linda Evangelista, the architect Sumayya Vally and the actor Kim Ji-won.