Decadance and Fashion: Costume Treasures

[Jane Cowl as Cleopatra in “Antony and Cleopatra”.]

MCNY Blog: New York Stories

Theatre is a space that grants opportunity for collaboration, inviting artists of different medias to join together to create something much larger than themselves. It is an opportunity to take an any idea–a fantasy, an historical moment, or a work of literature–and breathe life into it on a new scale. Costume design is integral to this transcendence. Whether glamorous or realistic, the craftsmanship and vision that goes into each garment transports the body of the actor into an alternate realm. The Art Deco movement exemplifies the crossover of the traditional role of the artist. Practitioners were not relegated to one medium: they designed sets and costumes, wrote scripts, and at times acted in the same production. We highlighted fashion in last week’s post – Mod Women: New York Fashion of the 1960s (if you haven’t yet voted for our project to digitize this collection, please do so here!); this week we will look at theater costumes.  At the…

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