The Pioneer Collaborationist

Previous decades—the ‘60s through the ‘90s—fostered enduring style, but what new ideas have fashion designers developed in the past few years that promise to change the face of fashion? “Today, there is nothing equivalent to the hippies or punks who really stood for and against something,” Suzy Menkes, the fashion editor of The International Herald Tribune, reminded me one evening during London Fashion Week while giving me a lift to The Mayfair Hotel.   
She makes a strong case. Recently seeing the current exhibition Les Années 1990-2000 Histoire Idéale de la Mode Contemporaine, Volume II at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, it was transparent that a stale ornamentation in the 2000s has replaced the creative design approach by fashion designers of the 1990s.To dig out of the doldrums, designers have managed in recent years to up the ante by collaborating with artists and painters, hoping to engender a new symbiosis that will bless fashion with a degree of coolness again; fashion needs the excitement of the art world, as the business of clothing is immensely boring. Yet imperative in fashion’s art adventures remains the thrust that a brand’s image and particular products have to be promoted and sold using whichever artist’s cache is then deemed in vogue. Thus, art’s dalliance with fashion has probably hurt its mission rather than enhance its appeal to a wider public. This has not always been the case, though, at least not a century ago.   
When “Le Pavillon d’Armide” premiered in Paris in May 1909, Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes ushered a new era of multi-disciplinary art collaborations that provided the impetus for the modernist experimentation—Cubism, Expressionism, Constructivism—many of the art movements that transformed Western culture in the early-20th century. Born in Russia in 1872, Mr. Diaghilev first became an art dealer, a critic, and a member of the Pickwickians, a group of influential artists and connoisseurs that included Léon Bakst (who later designed many of the sets and costumes for the performances in Paris) and Alexandre Benois, who taught Mr. Diaghilev the nuances of Western and Russian art. Mr. Diaghilev attended the St. Petersburg Conservatory of Music, but it was his interest in ballet that became his raison d’être. Through his connections in aristocratic circles, he managed to procure enough funding to almost single-handedly revive classical ballet in Russia, an experience that eventually led to the founding of the Ballets Russes.
As Mr. Diaghilev navigated the nascent Parisian art world at the turn of the century, he realized the potential for artists of different fields to merge their talents on a single project. Ballet provided the perfect platform for collaborations, as staging a performance required a mastermind to organize the creation of the set, the costumes, the choreography, the music, and the cast. Each Ballets Russes production was unique, as the current exhibition Diaghilev and the Golden Age of the Ballets Russes, 1909-1929 at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London—the largest collection of Diaghilev ephemera ever collected—demonstrates.
The artistic standard of the Ballets Russes was set early on with The Firebird (1910). Igor Stravinsky composed the music, set designer Natalia Goncharova painted a giant backdrop of Russian churches, and the costume designer Alexandre Golovine crafted spectacularly ornate wardrobes for the knights. The rising star dancer Vaslav Nijinsky choreographed L’Après midi d’un Faune (1912), while set and costume designer Léon Bakst dressed him in the famous black-and-white leggings. Mr. Bakst developed many memorable costumes, including a simple beige tennis uniform for Mr. Nijinsky in Jeux (1913), a loose, flared satin-cotton cloak with a lace shawl for La Légende de Joseph (1914), and a turquoise silk military coat with silver braids and gold ornate scrolls paired with mustard silk velvet shorts for the Marquis character in Tchaikovsky’s The Sleeping Princess (1921).  
The painter Henri Matisse designed the set (a large backdrop painting of a bird) and costumes (a gold, printed-silk Chinese dress and a white cotton-wool-felt robe with black triangles) for Le Chant du Rossignol (1920). Pablo Picasso designed a red cotton robe with yellow rays of sun sewn on three-dimensional gray twisted wave-and-cloud patterned trims for a Chinese conjurer in Parade (1917) in cooperation with Cocteau, the vibrant colors of the outfits reflecting a circus theme against the rising Cubist art movement. And Georges Braque made a soft beige floral embroidered dress with chiffon sleeves and trims and matching embroidered tights for Zephyr et Flore (1925).
The artisan collaborations climaxed during the production of Le Train Bleu (1924), a satire written by Jean Cocteau, scored by Darius Milhaud, choreographed by Bronislava Nijinska, and set designed by Henri Laurens. Le Train Bleu also featured a backdrop based on Pablo Picasso’s “Deux Femme Courant Sur La Plage” (1922), and costumes by Gabrielle Chanel. Instead of creating special costumes for the cast of tennis players, golfers, and sunbathers in search of adventures, Ms. Chanel dressed them in the actual items she was making to sell—black wool one-piece tank swimsuits and striped-wool two-piece tank bathing suits, striped-wool v-neck sweaters, wool knee-pants with stripes socks, and white wool polo shirts and long skirts for tennis. “Instead of trying to remain this side of the ridiculous in life, to come to terms with it, I would push beyond it,” was a note hand-written by Mr. Cocteau explaining the direction of the costumes. Ms. Chanel defied conventions by merging reality and theater, providing real clothes for staging an imaginative dance performance.
Mr. Diaghilev pioneered a unique method of asking artists to collaborate with each other in a single project, and that may be his greatest impact on the arts. It’s interesting to note that he was not remembered for changing the methodology of ballet. He certainly did do that through modernizing the performance, introducing the male lead character in every production, and bringing ballet into a realm of total theatre and entertainment. Le Sacre du Printemps (1913), based on the pagan ritual of sacrifice where a young girl dances herself to death, caused a riot in the aisles when it opened in May at the Théatre des Champs Elysées due to Mr. Nijinsky’s radical choreography of violent dance steps depicting the acts of fertility rites and Nicholas Roerich’s outrageous costumes that included primitive printed cloth sack dresses with elaborate headdresses and stone weapons. Never before had a ballet performance outraged so many; the performances were shut down after less than two weeks and most of the set and costumes were destroyed.  
The impact of the Ballets Russes, which closed shortly after Mr. Diaghilev’s death in 1929, on modern fashion, is immeasurable. Many of the Léon Bakst costumes provided the basis for the rise of Haute Couture in Paris in the post-WWI years, through his demonstrated craftsmanship evidenced in the beadings and embroideries he cribbed from Russian and Far Eastern costuming traditions. The French fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent based three of his collections directly on the Ballets Russes.
Mr. Diaghilev’s collaborations opened the stage for a wide range of artistic expressions that shaped the 20th century. The colorful and inventive costumes, the outrageousness of the stage décor, and the novel and energetic dance movements coupled perfectly with the sensuality exuded by the troupe of dancers. This is what made Ballets Russes a transformative experience for an entire generation of artists, fashion and costume designers, composers, poets, and painters.
While today’s fashion designers’ exploitation of the arts has resulted in handbags, perfumes bottles, and T-shirts left over from some orgiac events, Mr. Diaghilev understood that collaborations between artists were meant to create new art, not commerce. Only at the Ballets Russes did such legendary talents such as Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Georges Braque, Igor Stravinsky, Pyotr Tchaikosky, Gabrielle Chanel, Vaslav Nijinsky, George Balanchine, Giorgio de Chirico, and Léon Bakst (among so many others) come together under the aegis of a creative production. Mr. Diaghilev’s unique achievements have not been since repeated by anyone with the same breadth and reach.