Sparkling fashion shows, spectacular balls and beautiful costumes: after a long journey of almost four years of work and postponements due to the corona virus, Verdi’s “La Traviata” directed by Alessandro Talbi, who chose to place the plot in the world of high fashion and contemporary art in today’s Paris, was staged at the Opera House in Tel Aviv. . The show’s costume designer, Anya van Kraag, knows this world intimately. As a graduate of the Academy of Design in Copenhagen, she began her career in 1999 in Paris, at the Dior fashion house during John Galliano’s years as artistic designer (and at the same time in the brand that bears his name). For five years she worked closely with Galliano, and then another year and a half at Stella McCartney’s studio.
Van Kraag, 51 years old, who since 2006 combines couture with theatrical elements in her work in the theater and on the opera stage, finds some similarities between the two worlds. “At Galliano Bedior, everything came down to turning the person and the body into a wonderful creature and investing all the necessary resources. This is also the goal on stage, and in both cases you have to invest your full strength,” she says. “Even while studying at the design school in Copenhagen, I was deeply impressed by Galliano and knew that I only wanted to work for him,” she says. “His theatricality and extravagance attracted me much more than the loud fashion designers, and I was lucky enough to be hired by him. I felt at home and it was a great time. I then researched everything possible about cuts, structure, decorations. I was responsible for developing new techniques in free modeling. In the mornings we were in the studio of Galliano and from there we moved to housing in the afternoon.”
As a matter of fact, the dialogue between the world of opera and fashion is long-standing and fruitful. Quite a few collaborations have taken place between haute couture houses and opera productions: in 2016, Valentino designed costumes for “La Traviata” at the Rome Opera House, and in 2019, Ray Kawakubo instead of de Garson designed costumes for “Orlando” at the Vienna Opera House.
This time it was also possible to find this dialogue in a small exhibition presented in the foyer of the opera house, initiated by the fashion house Factory 54. The exhibition featured clothes from various productions from the opera archive that were combined by the stylist Simon Elmelem together with items from today’s designers. For example, a long skirt from Tchaikovsky’s opera “Pick Dam” from 2010 that was combined with a Balenciaga jacket and a bag from The Row; Or a dress from the production of “La Traviata” from 2017 and a Saint Laurent leather jacket over it. Almalem created precise silhouettes that dealt with a hot topic in the fashion world: sustainability and recycling.
Van Kraag, for her part, has already spoken about the need to change perceptions in the fashion world even before the corona virus. In an interview from 2018 ahead of the release of “Don Giovanni” in Israel, for which she also designed the costumes, she said: “I would be happy to work in a place that cares for the planet, that does not participate in this game of mass production.” Today she emphasizes: “You don’t need to buy new clothes every three months, but buy quality things that will be worn five and ten years later. It should be like that on stage as well. This is what I love about opera: clothes have life and are sent to many stages in the world and are passed from singer to singer: On dresses I designed for ‘Don Giovanni’ I found labels with the names of six or seven singers who wore them.”
The costumes designed by Van Kraag for “La Traviata” are indeed impressive in their splendor. Most of the work on them took place during the Corona years, her meetings and brainstorming with the director who lives in Italy were mainly on Skype, according to her, including the approval of her illustrations sent to him by email. After it was approved, she worked closely with the costume department at the Israeli Opera and visited Israel several times. “Usually at the opera, when I come with the paintings, we order fabrics from suppliers all over the world. Here it was different,” she says. “We had to use what was in Israel. We visited the stores in Nachalat Binyamin and found inspiration, often things changed according to what we found. For example, if I drew a dress in a certain color and the store had another fabric that I thought was much more beautiful – I was open to change, there are great stores here that offer fabrics Beautifully embroidered. For example, the embroidered fabric we found for Flora’s outfit did not require any decoration to be added to it.”
What is the difference between working in couture and working on stage costumes anyway? “In the haute couture houses there is a lot of money and in fact you can do whatever you want. It is extravagant from start to finish. At Dior we would create initial models on mannequins, and these were sent to the atelier next to the seamstress who made them an initial model in raw fabric, toile. We would take measurements on a model, return To the atelier, we change and so on two or three times, and when there was a precise cut, we would draw the positions of the embroidery and send it to the craftsmen and only at the end the model would be sewn in its real fabric. The accuracy is 100%. In opera and theater, on the other hand, even in expensive productions, the budget for costumes is limited, and you have to be creative. The fabrics are not always the finest, you work directly on the fabric without an initial model of Toel, and there is not much room for trial and error. At first it was very difficult for me.”