Women’s ensembles are usually the ones that get the attention, whether that’s a ballet tutu or an 18th century robe a la française.
But men’s ensembles can be just as intricate, sometimes even more so. This costume, worn by Christophe Duquenne, is a great example of this. The beautiful embroidery and crystals on beautiful jacquard, the gathers in the back…
Of course the bottoms are always plain. The dancer’s legs shouldn’t have to compete with a bunch of detailing. Standard men’s dance tights are worn that allow very free movement, and very free admiration of the hard work male dancers do in perfecting their bodies. It’s one thing to be lean, but another to sculpt their bodies the way they do. Sparkles and tons of textures would draw attention away from them getting to show off. And let’s face it. If you’re a male dancer, you want to show off what you’ve built just as much as you want to show off your skill. Take it from me and every gym rat I know–it’s far easier to get lean than to build muscle mass to show off.
So no work is needed there, costume-wise. This means the focus is on the top, and it’s a stunner. Now, I don’t believe the coat is fully separate from the vest. No videos I’ve seen show this coat separating from the body. I think it’s tacked to the vet to keep it closed while the dancer is dancing. In fact, I found this…
Okay, enough chit chat. On to the point of this post. As with Aurora’s tutu, this will have minimal commentary. All photos open to full size images in a new window.
I had a lot of photos of costumes I got when my daughter and I went this past December into January, but alas, they’re on my phone that was stolen. Since the last iCloud backup was December 29th, I lost everything over those few days until January 2nd. 🙁 So I think I’ll work on something from the Victoria & Albert Museum next. Rather than aiming for a particular post schedule, I’m aiming to spend an hour a day on new posts, so may post shorter posts more often. We shall see. 🙂