A Midsummer Night’s Dream

For its spring 2014 headliner, NYCB remounted A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The ballet originally debuted in 1962, choreographed by George Balanchine with costumes designed by Barbara Karinska. Fifty-two years later, many of the costumes were in disrepair and could not be worn for this premiere. So, the NYCB costume shop set about rebuilding the entire repertoire of garments.

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As the shopper, my job was to search high and low to find fabrics and notions which most closely resembled the original fabrics and notions from the early 60s. It was a highly detail-oriented process requiring inventive solutions. Oberon’s ivory organza and metallic gold cape fabric was impossible to find a substitute for, so we had it custom made to replicate the original fabric; many of the trims had to be custom woven as well. Everything down to the buttons and the jewels had to be as identical as possible to the original in order to preserve the historical integrity of Balanchine and Karinska’s vision. Below you can see up close progress photos along with photos of the original costumes side by side with our 2014 replica. If you can’t tell too much of a difference, then we did our job!