When it came to his ballets, the choreographer George Balanchine was the final word on the length and loft of a tutu. His interest in the headpieces and hairstyles of his dancers was keen. And in the late 1940s and the 1950s, he liked to see his wives—Maria Tallchief, followed by Tanaquil Le Clercq—in Christian Dior, whose New Look nipped waists and full skirts were essentially balletic. This is all to say that the man who was the heart and soul of New York City Ballet was involved in costuming and very aware of fashion.
Which is why the launch of N.Y.C.B.’s annual Fall Fashion Gala made such sense. It began when Sarah Jessica Parker, like a millennial sylph in a white tutu on the side of a bus, whispered in the ear of Peter Martins: Why not put designers and choreographers together once a year to create the now? In the fall of 2012, the Italian couturier Valentino was invited to design the costumes for four ballets at N.Y.C.B.
The man who was the heart and soul of New York City Ballet was involved in costuming and very aware of fashion.
In 2013, the idea was expanded. The gala would connect emerging and European choreographers with fashion designers from around the world. What a bounty that year brought. For Angelin Preljocaj’s Spectral Evidence, a ballet about the Salem witch trials, Olivier Theyskens conceived sheer white shifts scarred hauntingly with red. For Benjamin Millepied’s Neverwhere, the astonishing Iris van Herpen, the most experimental couturier out there, created insect armor of iridescent synthetic scales, the blue-black of a beetle.
It began when Sarah Jessica Parker, like a millennial sylph in a white tutu, whispered in the ear of Peter Martins: Why not put designers and choreographers together once a year to create the now?
A new illustrated book from Rizzoli, New York City Ballet: Choreography & Couture, pays tribute to 10 years of N.Y.C.B. Fall Fashion Galas and the eye-popping collaborations presented thus far. (The 2023 gala will take place in New York on October 5.) It kicks off with a heartfelt statement from Marc Happel, the company’s director of costumes. His mission? “To absolutely keep the integrity of the fashion designers’ concepts while making them work for dance.” And Patricia Mears, deputy director of the Museum at F.I.T., provides a superb essay on the centuries-deep affinity between dance and fashion. “This companionable relationship has been a natural fit,” she writes, “as both art forms rely on the human physique as a point of departure for their creative expression.”
And then there are the costumes for every collaboration from 2012 to 2022—34 in all, 28 of them world premieres—inventively, colorfully photographed by Pari Dukovic. The designers are a glittering lot, among them Carolina Herrera, Mary Katrantzou, Virgil Abloh, Giles Deacon, Anna Sui, Zac Posen, and Raf Simons. And who would have guessed that Thom Browne’s preppy pleated skirts and schoolboy shorts could look so classical? —Laura Jacobs
New York City Ballet: Choreography & Couture, by Marc Happel, with photographs by Pari Dukovic, is out now from Rizzoli
Laura Jacobs is AIR MAIL’s Arts Intel Report Editor
