"Stand and face me, my love, and scatter the grace in your eyes"
-Sappho
In order to start this collection I had to first choose the subject. I knew I wanted to do costumes for a ballet, but which ballet. I decided to design for an imagined ballet based on the Greek myth of Cupid & Psyche. This myth has the classic theme of forbidden love & lust, with all the trials and tribulations that come with it. Ultimately, the ending is happy, with Cupid & Psyche living on mount olympus together and Psyche be transformed into goddess of the soul.
Originally Cupid is a man, but I chose to make her a woman to tell the story of two women who have fallen in love against all circumstances. In today’s era the concept of forbidden love as a man and a woman is overdone. As a queer woman, I thought this was a story that needed to be told, and wanted to set my art to this story.
Having never made anything as highly specialised as a tutu before, this collection was a huge undertaking that I loved doing. Many months prior were spent researching the different ways of constructing the basic tutu. Many thanks to BalletMet Columbus, Royal Academy of Arts in London, and Akron University theatre department for their valuable assistance. After the basics of tutu construction were figured out I had to decide how to embellish all the costumes. This is my favourite part of designing, figuring out how to make it sparkle! For the feathers on Cupid’s skirt I tried over 10 different foiling & gilding techniques.
50 yards of tulle, 1000 sequins, and 500 rhinestones later and I’ve got a collection that I could not be happier with.
Moodboards & photo layout created in Adobe Illustrator
Sketches created in Adobe Photoshop
Models
Cupid: Cassidy Sarren
Psyche: Deijah Archie-Davis
Nymph: Tarnesea
Photography: T. Lazarus