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Ballet Costume History
Ballet costumes constitute an essential part of stage design and can be considered as a visual
record of a performance. They are often the only survival of a production, representing a living imaginary picture
of the scene.
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Renaissance and Baroque
The origins of ballet lie in the court spectacles of the Renaissance in France
and Italy, and evidence of costumes specifically for ballet can be dated to the early fifteenth century.
Illustrations from this period show the importance of masks and clothing for spectacles. Splendor at court
was strongly reflected in luxuriously designed ballet costumes. Cotton and silk were mixed with flax woven
into semitransparent gauze.
From the beginning of the sixteenth century, public theaters
were being built in Venice (1637), Rome (1652), Paris (1660), Hamburg (1678), and other important cities. Ballet
spectacles were combined in these venues with processional festivities and masquerades, as stage costumes became
highly decorated and made from expensive materials. The basic costume for a male dancer was a tight-fitting,
often brocaded cuirass, a short draped skirt and feather-decorated helmets. Female dancers wore opulently
embroidered silk tunics in several layers with fringes. Important components of the ballet dress were tightly
laced, high-heeled and wedged boots for both dancers, which constituted characteristic footwear for this
period.
From 1550, classical Roman dress had a strong influence on
costume design: silk skirts were voluminous; positioning of necklines and waistlines and the design of hairstyles
were based on the components of everyday dress, although on the stage key details were often exaggerated. Male
dancers' dresses were influenced by Roman armor. Typical colors of ballet costumes ranged from dark copper to
maroon and purple. A more detailed description of the theatrical dress in the Renaissance and Baroque periods
may be found in Lincoln Kirstein's Four Centuries of Ballet (1984, p. 34).
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Seventeenth Century
From the seventeenth century onward, silks, satins, and fabrics embroidered with real
gold and precious stones increased the level of spectacular decoration associated with ballet costumes. Court dress
remained the standard costume for female performers while male dancers' costumes had developed into a kind of uniform
embellished with symbolic decoration to denote character or occupation; for example, scissors represented a
tailor.
The first Russian ballet performance was staged in 1675, and the
Russians adopted European ballet designs. Although costumes for male performers permitted complete freedom of movement,
heavy garments and supporting structures for female dancers did not allow graceful gestures. However, male dancers en
travesti, often wore knee-long skirts. The luxuriously decorated costumes of this period reflected the glory of the
court; details of dresses and silhouettes were exaggerated to be visible and identifiable to spectators viewing from
a distance.
Eighteenth Century
From the early eighteenth century, European ballet was centered in the Paris
Opéra. Stage costumes were still very similar in outline to the ones in ordinary use at Court, but more
elaborate. Around 1720, the panier, a hooped petticoat, appeared, raising skirts a few inches off the ground. During
the reign of Louis XVI, court dress, ballet costumes, and fashionable architectural design incorporated decorative
rococo prints and ornamental garlands. Flowers, flounces, ribbons, and lace emphasized this opulent feminine style,
as soft pastel tones in citron, peach, pink, azure, and pistachio dominated the color range of stage costumes. Female
dancers in male roles became popular, and, after the French Revolution in 1789 in particular, male costumes reflected
the more conservative and sober Neoclassical style, which dominated the design of everyday fashionable dress. However,
massive wigs and headdresses still restricted the mobility of dancers. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
Russian ballet and European ballet developed similarly and were often considered an integral part of the opera.
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Nineteenth Century
From the early nineteenth century, the ideals of Romanticism were reflected in
female stage costumes through the introduction of close-fitting bodices, floral crowns, corsages, and pearls on
fabrics, as well as necklace and bracelets; Neoclassical style still dominated the design of male costumes.
Moreover, the role of the ballerina as star dancer became more important and was emphasized with tight-fitting
corsets, bejeweled bodices, and opulent headdresses. In 1832, Marie Taglioni's gauze-layered white tutu in La
Sylphide set a new trend in ballet costumes, in which silhouettes became tighter, revealing the legs and the
permanently toe-shoed feet. From this point on, the silhouette of ballet costumes became more tight fitting.
The choreography required that ballerinas to wear pointe shoes all the time. The Russian ballet continued to
develop in the nineteenth century and such writers and composers as Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Tchaikovsky changed
the meaning of ballet through the composition of narrative productions. Choreographers of classical ballet, such
as Marius Petipa, created fairy-tale ballets, including The Sleeping Beauty (1890), Swan Lake (1895), and
Raymonde (1898), making fantasy costumes very popular.
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Twentieth Century
At the turn of the twentieth century, ballet costumes reformed again under the more
liberal influence of the Russian choreographer Michel Fokine. Ballerina skirts changed gradually to become
knee-length tutus designed to show off the point work and multiple turns, which formed the focus of dance
practice. The dancer Isadora Duncan freed ballerinas from corsets and introduced a revolutionary natural
silhouette. The Russian impresario and producer Serge Diaghilev marked this era with his creative innovations,
and professional costumers like Alexandre Benois and Léon Bakst demonstrated, in performances such as
Schéhérezade (1910), that the influence of Orientalism had spread from fashion to the stage and
vice versa. Indeed, fashion designers like Jean Poiret had already used the tunic shape taken up by dancers in
the prewar era, and, in the 1920s, costume designers updated classical Russian story ballets with exotic tunics
and veils wrapped around the body. Ballet dancers were dressed in loose tunics, harem pants, and turbans, rather
than in the established tutu and feather headdress. Instead of discreet pastel colors vibrant shades, such as
yellow, orange, or red, often in wild patterns, gave an unprecedented visual impression of exciting exoticism
to the spectator.
Modernism and Postmodernism
Modernism liberalized the rules of ballet costumes, and, after Diaghilev's death
in 1929, costume design was no longer impeded by restrictions imposed by traditionalists. Nowadays ballet dancers
perform in various costumes, which can still include traditional Diaghilev designs. In postmodern productions
like Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake, the costume designer Lez Brotherston turned the traditional gracile female
cygnets into topless, feather-legged male swans. However, fashion designers of the 1990s have picked up the
theme of ballerina shoes. The house of Chanel designed elegant, heelless slippers tied up with ribbons and
brought the ballerina shoe from the stage to the street.
The mask in ballet spectacles
Mary Clarke's and Clement Crisp's Design for Ballet (London 1978, p. 34) serves to
illustrate a vivid description of the importance of masks in ballet performances to stylize characters: "For
demons, this was properly hideous; for nymphs it would be sweetly naïve, rivers wore venerable bearded
masks, while dwarfs and juveniles might be encumbered with massive heads. Masks were also sometimes placed upon
knees, elbows, and the chest to indicate something more of the character." Half-masks were still worn until
the 1770s and were from then on replaced by facial makeup.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
André, Paul. The Great History of Russian Ballet. Bournemouth, U.K.: Parkstone Publishers, 1998.
Chazin-Bennahum, Judith. A Longing for Perfection: Neoclassic Fashion and Ballet. Oxford: Fashion Theory 6,
no. 4 (2002): 369 - 386.
Clarke, Mary, and Clement Crisp. Design for Ballet. London: Cassell and Collier, Macmillan Publishers, Ltd., 1978.
Kirstein, Lincoln. Four Centuries of Ballet. New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1984.
Morrison, Kirsty. From Russia with Love. Canberra: National Gallery of Australia, 1998.
Reade, Brian. Ballet Designs and Illustrations 1581 - 1940. London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1967.
Schouvaloff, Alexander. The Art of Ballet Russes. New Haven, Conn., and London: Yale University Press, 1997.
Williams, Peter. Masterpieces of Ballet Design. Oxford: Phaidon Press, Ltd, 1981.
Wulf, Helena. Ballet Across Borders. Oxford and New York: Berg Publishers, 1998.
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