Costumes of the Ballets Russes

Like Diaghilev, who always looked immaculate, but sometimes had holes in his shoes, theatre costumes do not always bear close examination.  Displayed in glass cases, protected from dust and light, they are often perceived as tatty, tawdry and crude, perhaps only tolerated because of their association with an iconic artist.  Yet they were never conceived as 'art' objects, but rather as one element in a stage performance.  Redolent of the disreputable, ephemeral, hurly-burly of theatre, costumes reek of life and perspiration, of the nightly stress of performance, when they were thrown on and ripped off, struggled into by other bodies than those for which they were made, then packed into skips still soaked with sweat.  They bear honourable scars -- hasty repairs alongside more careful darns and patching, alterations for different dancers, the rotted fabric under arms and around belted waists, make-up ingrained into the necks, the names of the first casts neatly written on labels; those of later ones scrawled onto the lining.

Given the association with respectable artists and secondarily with Diaghilev's Ballets Russes (which is often treated as an offshoot of an art movement, not as theatre) costume and set designs were readily admitted into museums as art objects in their own right.  Meanwhile, the costumes for which they were the blueprints were overlooked, partly because of their poor condition, partly because boldness was confused with 'crudeness'.  Such an attitude has not completely died out and some still prefer to imagine a heavenly stage on which the animated designs dance forever.  Yet the success of a design lies not so much in its artistic worth, as in whether the drawing translate successfully into fabric and decoration, or works with the choreography on the dancer as part of the stage picture.

"Wardrobe" by Sarah Woodcock in Diaghilev and the Golden Age of the Ballets Russes 1909-1929 edited by Jane Pritchard. 2010. Page 129.