It’s funny how before Darren Aronovsky’s Black Swan and its “iconic” Rodarte costumes (read: feathery tutus…), there weren’t many people in the fashion industry who were into ballet.
In fact, asking your fashionista friends if they wanted to come to a ballet performance was a bit like committing social suicide and, if you ever managed to drag them to a show, talking after the performance about pliés, demi pliés, ports de bras and ronds de jambe à terre was simply out of the question.
So blame it on Black Swan if photo shoots, runways and window shops are an orgy of tutu-like dresses, ballet slippers, arm and leg warmers and pale pink ballet sweater wraps; if fashion bloggers have recycled themselves into ballet experts and the film protagonists are considered as fashion icons (actor Vincent Cassel and director Darren Aronofsky recently worked together on a cinematic ad for Yves Saint Laurent’s La Nuit de L’Homme that will launch at the end of March).
I admit that thinking about the time when a group of mothers, aunts and grandmothers volunteered to hand-knit the pink sweater wraps we needed at ballet school since it was too expensive to buy the ready-made version, while some of us decided to transform tights into sweaters to save even more time and money, makes me feel slightly murderous towards this rather fake horde of fashion balletomanes.
Womenswear was definitely heavily influenced by Black Swan dementia but also by another trend, the rediscovery of the Ballets Russes.
Yet John Galliano could be considered as the first designer who brought ballet mania into a menswear collection for the next season, though he approached the trend in an almost narrative way, chronicling on the runway the life of male ballet dancers who represented the epitome of manliness and youthfulness, such as Rudolf Nureyev and Vaslav Nijinsky, moving from their life in Russia to their struggles and successes.
Indeed, while ballet begins at the barre with rigorous and hard exercises, Galliano started the catwalk shows with a vision from the steppe.
The first designs on the runway were actually more Rasputin than Rudolf, crossovers between the "Mad Monk" and the Russian émigré look, with cumbersome coats and jackets covered in snow or in a film of dust tied at the waist with leather belts, oversized furry hats, scarves (and beards) covered in metal hairpins and crosses hanging from necklaces.
A touch of romance appeared in a bright red knitted motorcycle jacket embroidered with roses and in tapestry-like trousers.
Shortly afterwards the scene changed (after all wasn't Nureyev born on a Trans-Siberian train?) and moved to the West introducing streamlined silhouettes, tight trousers and silk scarves, a dream of an arty, sophisticated and refined world channelled through a fur coat that evoked talented charlatans and impresarios à la Sergei Diaghilev.
Then the scene changed again, transporting the runway behind the wings, to a world populated by male ballet dancers rehearsing in sweat-soaked grey tops, nude tights and leg warmers piled one on top of the other and with the occasional faun who looked more like a devil in glittery horns.
The show ended with beaded and embroidered sleeveless jackets, turbans (View this photo) and Harlequin printed shirts that called to mind Petrushka's costumes and the constructivist paintings of Aleksandra Ekster, in a nutshell it verged more towards an Orientalist homoeroticism with a few urban connotations.
So far Galliano has actually been the only designer who reminded us that “la belle danse” actually began as a manly art: it was indeed part of a man’s education together with riding and swordsmanship and ballet masters were essential figures in the lives of a 17th-century nobleman.
Things changed when Russians dancers arrived on the scene with their skills and passion for art and architecture.
In Galliano’s homage to Nureyev, the comparison between fashion and ballet worked pretty well: fashion is physically and psychologically challenging, but essentially ephemeral, but such qualities can also be applied to the career of a ballet dancer.
Yet there was something missing in Galliano’s collection: the barre usually finishes with grand battements, that is big beats and kicks and, while in ballets such as "Giselle" or "Swan Lake", the main characters may die, the beauty remains to testify that ballet is one of the highest forms of art.
At the end of Galliano’s show there weren’t any big beats or memorable moments of beauty, but a sort of flat anti-climax that somehow broke the dream and the vision of famous ballet dancers à la Nijinsky, though it was interesting to see an interpretation of ballet in a menswear collection.
That said, if I see another tutu-like dress, layered tights, fakely tattered leg/arm warmers and pink wraps on another runway (hopefully we will be spared this fake ballet mania in this week’s Haute Couture collections - hopefully...) I will dig out of my old trunks my pointe shoes and start using them as weapons.
Somehow I'm sure I will be followed by hordes of ballet dancers and genuine balletomanes.
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One particular piece in Galliano's collection, the black blazer with strips of crochet (?) on the the front coming down the sides, made me think of a coat from Paul Poiret.
Poiret designed a tailored black wool coat with filigree applique (1919). I first saw that coat in the book "Poiret" by Harold Koda and Andrew Bolton published by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Paul Poiret... Ballet Russe....
I enjoyed reading your article.
Posted by: Nancy | January 24, 2011 at 07:18 PM