In the Baroque period, and especially for the performances designed by Les Menus-Plaisirs du Roi in Versailles, it seems that it was common practice to reuse existing costumes and to adapt them to clothe characters of a new play. Not all costumes were fabricated from scratch. Following a similar process, costume elements from previous BEMF productions have been “recycled” and combined with a few new designs that were fabricated to fit the particular narratives of the sumptuous fêtes of Idylle sur la Paix and La Fête de Rueil.

References to times before the year 1685 have been incorporated, quoting for example the style of Court Ballet during the reign of Louis XIII. The painter Daniel Rabel designed highly imaginative and sometimes grotesque costumes for these courtly mascarades. Much later, when an interest in recreating Baroque dance arose in early twentieth-century Germany, the innate experimental nature of these costumes inspired Oskar Schlemmer as well for his famous Triadic Ballet. This illustrates a transhistorical interest for the Baroque that moves beyond the confines of the Baroque timeline (seventeenth and eighteenth centuries).

The costume design for this piece is steeped in deep research about fashions of the Baroque period. The design references numerous paintings, fashion plates, and engravings, as well as existing designs that were studied closely in the costume collections of the RISD Museum (during an Andrew W. Mellon faculty fellowship) and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Three costumes in particular were conceived after viewing pieces from the Met’s Costume Institute, and portray different social roles and archetypes, such as an aristocratic lady, an allegorical character representing Peace (La Paix), and a shepherd dwelling in an ideal Arcadian landscape.

The costume for the Princesse de Conti was made after studying a rare specimen of a mantua dress that was cut in bizarre silk. While, due to budget constraints, the fabric chosen for this contemporary reinterpretation is of a much more modest nature than the original one, the cut is historically “accurate” and is fitted on the bust by means of pleats, which suggests that such a garment originated after the “customization” of an Asian robe at the French Court. The dress is accessorized with a stomacher, whose pattern comes from the book of embroidery designs Nuovissimo Exemplare di Ricami, published in Venice in 1694, and is here juxtaposed with lilies in a reference to the traditional emblem of the kingdom of France.

The cape of the allegorical character performing Peace (La Paix) is modeled after a seventeenth-century cape from the Met’s collection, a garment originally made for a child or to clothe a Catholic statue. The dimensions of the cape, including its intricate ornamental design, were scaled to fit the measurements of the performer. As in the original cape, the foliage motives were painstakingly cut out of fabric with scissors, layered as appliqué on top of the foundation fabric, and enhanced with embroidered details that mimic early lace-making techniques from Italy or Spain, creating visual results that are both raw and sophisticated.

Finally, the waistcoat that represents a shepherd, or a gardener, was modeled on a third piece from the Costume Institute: a men’s hunting casaque cut out a deer skin that was exquisitely embroidered with flower motifs. In this costume the floral ornamentation turns three-dimensional and grows on top of elements that recall architectural lattice designs used in formal French gardens. Such designs are presented in André Jacques Roubo’s 1775 book L’art du treillageur, ou menuiseries des jardins, and give an idea of how the space for La Fête de Rueil was conceived for the performance to take place in the open air as a “total artwork.”

—Gwen van den Eijnde