One of my personal obsessions is studying the links between cinema/theatre/opera and ballet costume design and fashion. It’s only natural then that I’ve always been in love with the Ballet Russes. The famous corp de ballet outshone everything else in the performing arts when it came to influencing fashion, home and public decoration. Diaghilev’s decorative Modernism influenced the British TV serial about the Elliott sisters and their fashion house in 1920s London; in 1997 Mulberry produced a home furnishing collection inspired by the Ballet Russes while Yves Saint Laurent designed in 1976 the “Ballet Russes Collection”.
After seeing Marc Jacobs’ Spring 09 collection at New York Fashion Week, the art of the Ballet Russes came to my mind. In his Spring looks the designer opted for an extravagant excess of fabrics, colours, layers and accessories. Yet, in these excesses, it is still possible to trace a mastery of chromatic combinations that, clashing together, ends up forming endless mismatched/mixed-and-matched harmonies of colour.
This mood flowed from the beginning of the collection to its end: a bold combination of colours, different patterns and shiny and shimmering fabrics characterised each outfit, from the bustled up prairie skirts that gave the body sinuous lines and slender curves to the metallic tweed jackets and tops. Some outfits had the glamorous combination of colours of the costumes for “Shéhérazade” with their reds, blues, and golds, others evoked the bright saffron yellows of “Narcisse” and of the Mandarin costume in “Le Chant du rossignol”, or the emerald green of the Cossack costume in “Thamar”.
There was also a touch of Orientalism in a qipao-style top and in Jacobs' harem pants, the latter being a crossover between Poiret’s Orientalist outfits and the costume for the golden slave in "Schéhérazade".
The innovative quality of the collection didn’t stand in the single pieces, but in the actual synthesis, in the combination of Eliza Doolittle-like dresses with harem pants and in the final chic kaleidoscope-like effect obtained by adding absurd high-heeled espadrilles, quilted bags and chunky necklaces with a tribal edge.
The hall of mirrors set - courtesy of Stefan Beckman - contributed to the "feast for the eye effect", multiplying the colourful outfits, adding a level of infinity to the show, turning the runway into a multidimensional arena of fantasy sparkling with desire, one of the impulses that deeply inspires, moves and animates fashion.
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