All photographs courtesy of the National Museum of Singapore
With their costumes for Robert Wilson’s new staging of the romantic
opera “Der Freischütz” (The Freeshooter) by Carl Maria von Weber,
Viktor & Rolf have recently become the youngest fashion designers
to join the long list of couturiers who also worked for the stage. Yet
one of the most famous designers who turned costumier, perfectly
combining and balancing his passion for fashion with his love for
theatricality, is Christian Lacroix.
An exhibition at the National Museum of Singapore,
entitled “Christian Lacroix The Costumier” and curated by Delphine
Pinasa, is at present celebrating the French designer’s work through 80
spectacular costumes and 60 sketches and illustrations from the
collection of the Moulins-based Centre National du Costume de Scène. This is the first time the costumes are shown out of France, so the event has a globally cultural resonance.
As a child Lacroix was deeply fascinated by fairground theatres and
shows for children. After the performances he would usually imagine new
costumes for the shows he had just seen and then draw them. This first
passion prompted him to become a fashion designer and, in 1986, he
finally had the chance to work for the first time for the theatre when
he met Jean-Luc Tardieu, director of the Maison de la Culture in
Nantes, who asked him to design the costumes for Edmond Rostand’s
Chantecler. The play had as main characters a group of barn animals and
Lacroix devised fantastically extravagant costumes that somehow echoed
the animals’ characteristics but did not represent them realistically.
When they entered the dimly lit stage, the actors projected with the
costume silhouettes Chinese shadows of different animals, but, once the
lights went up, the characters looked very different from what the
audience had imagined them. The guinea fowl character for example wore
a costume that featured black and white polka dot prints used by
Lacroix to symbolise the bird’s feathers.
Since this first show and from the next 25 years, Lacroix designed
costumes for theatrical productions both in France and abroad, winning
twice the Molière Award, France’s national theatre prize for Best
Costume Designer, for his work in Phèdre and Cyrano.
A few examples of Lacroix’s talent for mixing the most disparate
inspirations are the costumes for Gâité Parisienne (1988), inspired by
the Belle Epoque, Henry de Toulouse-Loutrec, the Moulin Rouge and
Vincente Minnelli’s musicals; his work for Othello (1995) in which he
combined bits and pieces from flea markets such as biker jackets with
luxurious fabrics or for Così fan tutte (2006) that featured streetwear
such as jersey hoods and historical costumes from the 18th century. For
Shéhérazade (2001) Lacroix was instead inspired by a book of the One
Thousand and One Night he was given by his grandparents as a child, by
Léon Bakst’s costumes for Sergei Diaghilev’s eponymous ballet and by
his contemporary designs, from bright red tutus to black and white
corsets and turquoise and jade harem pants.
Among the most
colourful costumes exhibited there are those for Carmen, staged in 1989
and directed by Antoine Bourseiller. Studying the shades and nuances
used by Ignacio Zuloaga and Julio Romero de Torres in their paintings,
Lacroix combined in the dresses for this opera traditional Spanish
clothes and bullfighters’ uniforms, designing around 350 costumes.
The exploration of Spanish traditions continued in the costumes for
Arsa y Toma, a show that chronicled the history of flamenco from
tourist attraction to art form and that included both multi-coloured
polka dot costumes and more elegant black and grey dresses with pleated
skirts.
The embroidered heavy latex armours for Phèdre (1995) and in
particular the costume for the Theseus character - the piece that took
longer to be made as it needed to be moulded and sculpted, then dried
and painted in gold and black - contrast with the lightest tutus Karol
Armitage wore in Les Anges Ternis (1987), a show that explored the
heritage of classical ballet and became a great collaborative work
between choreographer, set designer and costumier.
Lacroix also used colours in his costumes as symbols - the red
dresses in Eliogabalo (2004) were wearable metaphors for sex, passion,
violence and ultimately death - and collaborated with other artists
such as jewellery maker Claude Arpels incorporating in his velvet
corsets and long tutus for the show Joyaux (2000) precious pearls and
stones.
“Christian Lacroix The Costumier” perfectly chronicles the
designer’s devotion to theatre, opera and ballet throughout the
decades, concluding with his most recent work - long draped dresses in
the Greek fashion and taffeta evening gowns with sculpted hemlines -
for the production company Les Arts Florissants.
Some of the exhibited pieces were worn by famous personalities such
as Spain’s legendary flamenco dancer Christina Hoya, Comédie
Française’s Martine Chevallier and the Opéra de Paris principal dancer
Wilfride Piollet, and the exhibition is accompanied by a series of
events - from opera shows to design workshops - that perfectly
complement the visitor’s journey through Christian Lacroix’s
kaleidoscopic universe of colours and inspirations.
“Christian Lacroix The Costumier” is at the National Museum of Singapore until 7th June 2009.
