Wings Take Flight
Please excuse my tardy posting today. I'm laid up with a bad back and it's making feel and look about 100 years old!
Last night I was contacted by young fashion designer Laura Theiss, who told me about her recent collaboration with Irish choreographer Marguerite Donlon, for her piece entitled Wings, featuring dancers from the Ballet of the Saarland State Theatre. Wings attempts to explore "everyday heroes who do not allow others to limit the freedom of their thoughts".
I have spoken to many designers who have turned their hand at creating costumes for ballet, as well as the wardrobe mistress at Scottish Ballet, about the challenges faced when designing for dancers and everyone agrees that it's very different to normal fashion design. There are obviously many more technical considerations, such as considering the way the dancers will be moving in the clothing, as well as the visual element - ballet does not benfit from words so the audience relies heavily on costumes as well as the movements to understand the story. Fashion designers are also used to models who have little or no say in the designers, whereas dancers are very much part of the costume process as they need the costumes to fit their bodies perfectly and be able to help them bring richness and life to the choreography.
Laura's knitted and crocheted creations are seem to perfectly balance her own creative requirements with that of the dancers and the production overall. She avoided wool, since it'd be much too warm, and instead created everything from cotton and cotton blends with silk, but also lurex, metallic yarn and tulle.